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COPYRIGHT DEPOSfT. 



CHRIST LORD 
OF BATTLES 

BY 

WALTER M. HAUSHALTER 

Author of "The Reconstruction of the 
American Church" 




BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, iqiq, by Richard G. Badger 
All Rights Reserved 



Made in the United States of America 
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

©CU530976 C 

Hecorded 



TO 

THE WOMAN 
WHO HAS MADE LIFE FRAGRANT 
WITH THE IDEALISM 
OF CHRIST. 



INTRODUCTION 



"Almost all things are by the law purged with 
blood; and without shedding of blood is no remis- 
sion of sin." Hebrews, g -.22. 

"Think not that I am come to send peace on 
earth; I come not to send peace, but a sword." 
Jesus, Matthew, 10:34. 

"By faith the prophets subdued Kingdoms, es- 
caped the edge of the sword, waxed mighty in war, 
turned to flight armies of the aliens." Hebrews 
11 -33-3 5- 



INTRODUCTION 



A GREAT modern poet, whose art depends on 
more than involved artifice, has remarked 
that August 4, 19 14, like a great knife, divides 
Universe History. As a result the world is now 
passing through one of those terribly confused 
times known as a period of transition. The spirit 
of God is brooding over the face of the deep void, 
working the clay of chaos into order. The time is 
full of contradictions, "out of joint," as Hamlet 
would say; and yet it is one of the most fascinating 
times in which a man could have been sent into 
the world to live and make his contribution. There 
is a hectic something and yet a promising some- 
thing discernible in the lightest conversation of 
the fireside or in the weighty words and actions 
of public men. A recent dramatist said that our 
day is the most visionary and yet the most prac- 
tical, the most hard-headed and yet the most soft- 
headed, the most positive and yet the most per- 
plexed, the most despondent and yet the most hope- 

7 



8 



Introduction 



ful time the world has ever known. Phillips 
Brooks declared his own day so seething with nerv- 
ous perplexity and confusion that if the Nineteenth 
Century were to last much longer the world could 
not endure it. 

I am wandering between two worlds, one dead 
The other powerless to be born ; 
With nowhere yet to rest my head 
Like those on earth I wait forlorn. 

But every time of world uncertainty has proved 
a time of added religious zeal and power. Ice and 
rock are both solid but in time of dissolving the 
ice melts and the rock remains. So in our time 
the world is getting a new consciousness of the 
great "Rock in a weary land," the adamantine 
Christ, the Hope of the World. 

During the death-grapple of the world Arma- 
geddon a beautiful story found favour among the 
soldiers in France, a story that acknowledged no 
blush of unbelief in claiming the miraculous inter- 
vention of angels in the British defense at Mons. 
The story, like that of the White Christ, found 
considerable assent among the farther-removed 
people at home. Its truth was attested by the re- 
ligious press, and by the pulpits of Manchester and 



Introduction 



9 



Weymouth whose clergy gave verification from 
friends who knew and saw. The testimony puts 
it that on August 24, 1914, the British contingent, 
out of touch with the French, were in danger of 
annihilation from the Germans under Von Kluck. 
The steel-gray masses of Germans were sweeping 
up to the English trenches in irresistible waves. 
One Englishman had the presence of mind to in- 
voke St. George, the patron-saint of England, and 
straightway there appeared before the English 
trenches a host of shining bow-men who charged 
the Germans. Their arrows cut dowm the enemy 
faster than machine-guns. The archers w T ere sup- 
posed to be those same who had saved the day for 
England at Agincourt, hundreds of years before. 
The story had gone so far that Dean Henson 
preached a strong sermon in Westminster Cathe- 
dral against the introduction of superstition into 
Christ's religion; and for a shilling one may buy 
Arthur Machen's 'The Bowmen," in which he 
sifts the evidence to find that the British them- 
selves charged the enemy with the St. George bat- 
tle-cry and won the day. 

Let the explanation be as mystical or as ration- 
alistic as you will, there is the conviction in the 



10 



Introduction 



heart of the thoughtful world of today that in 
the Armageddon of the Universe Christ has not 
been pacifist. The conviction has become deeply 
throbbing and vibrant in a vast majority of Chris- 
tendom that the peaceful, spiritual, meditative 
Christ can, like Hamlet, put his "War-visage" on 
and go forth to do battle. When the pacifist 
quotes Scripture, trumps of course call for trumps, 
and there are not wanting eloquent passages to 
vindicate the militant Christ. "They that bear 
the sword bear it not in vain for they also are 
ministers of Christ to execute wrath upon the dis- 
obedient." "He that hath no sword," says Jesus, 
"let him sell his garments and go buy one." "I 
come not to send peace upon the earth but a 
sword." From the flaming sword placed in the 
Garden of Eden to defend the tree of life to the 
sword of the Word of God of Revelation, three 
hundred and fifty-one times that sharp, keen, inex- 
orable weapon flashes forth from the sacred pages. 
When the golden rule of life is broken the sword 
is unsheathed and the assumption is that there 
is an evil worse than war, — that is a peace that 
must cringe and crouch before infamy and wrong. 
If the thought of Jesus Christ in armour, wielding 



Introduction 



ii 



the sword for His army-host, jars the soft con- 
sciousness of Christendom, our only reply is that 
it shall not have been the first time that Jesus 
Christ jolted the world. 

It may not be altogether without profit to read 
in its modern light John Ruskin's estimate of war 
in his "Crown of Wild Olive." It is a beautiful 
setting of peace "fair-hidden yet full confessed" 
that Ruskin stages for his estimate of war. "War," 
says Ruskin, u is the foundation of all the lofty 
faculties of man. Most people who think that 
peace and virtue flourish together, will find the 
thesis untenable. The Muse of History shows us 
that peace and vice, peace and selfishness, peace 
and corruption, flourish together. All great na- 
tions were nourished in war and wasted by peace. 
All great arts come not from an agricultural peo- 
ple but from nations of soldiers. There was never 
a great art of eloquence or painting or sculpture 
or architecture that was not based on battle. The 
greatness of France, England, Spain, arose from 
streams that ran red with blood of battle and 
as peace is established and nations become tran- 
quil they become corrupt and need the passion 
and peril of battle." 



12 



Introduction 



Certainly we have no apology to offer for this 
Prussianism in English pages. Ruskin had a great 
deal to learn from William James', "Moral Equiv- 
alent of War," and a great deal to unlearn from 
Neitzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil." From the 
opposite frenzies of pacifism and militarism heaven 
forfend us! To see Ruskin's philosophy lifted 
from the printed page and put into chemical real- 
ism has been the sad lot of the present melan- 
choly generation. However, one of the moral 
gifts to the Age as an outcome of the world war 
and sacrifice shall be an invigorated conception of 
the Prince of Battles, the Christ who overcomes 
the world evil with good. If the following pages 
aid the day's understanding of the militant and 
triumphant Christ, they are not in vain. 

There are white faces in each quiet street, 
And signs of trouble meet us everywhere; 
The nation's pulse hath an unsteady beat 
As news of battle floats upon the air. 

God ! how this land grows rich in loyal blood 
Poured forth from out its breadth and length, 
The incense of a people's sacrifice, 
The wrested offering of a people's strength. 

'Tis the costliest land beneath the sun ! 
'Tis priceless, purchaseless, and not a rood 



Introduction 



13 



But hath its title written clear and signed 
In some slain hero's consecrated blood. 

And every flower that gems its mellowing soil 
Thrives well beneath the holy dew 
Of tears that ease a nation's striving heart 
When battle-echoes smite it through and through. 

Walter M. Haushalter 

New York City 
July, 1919. 



CONTENTS 



Part I 

PAGE 

The Christ of Battle 19 

Part II 

The Fall of Babylon and the Second Advent 
of Christ 45 

Part III 

Armageddon 69 

Part IV 

The Christ of Peace 95 



15 



PART I 

THE CHRIST OF BATTLE 



"He that hath no sword, let him sell his gar- 
ments and buy one." Christ, Luke 22:36. 

"The powers that be are ordained of God. 
Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to 
the evil. He beareth not the sword in vain; for 
he is the minister of God to execute wrath upon 
him that doeth evil." Paul, Romans 13:1-4- 



CHRIST LORD OF 
BATTLES 



THE CHRIST OF BATTLE 

DURING the past four years many sincere 
minds have undergone a struggle, pendu- 
lum-like in its swing of emotions and torn loyalties, 
from pacifist to militant Christianity, and back 
again. At one time we quell before the sublime 
moral idealism of, "If thine enemy smite thee on 
the one cheek," and at another time we flash with 
admiration for a strong hand driving out the 
money changers from the Temple. In the same 
breath, we grasp the glaring anomaly of "They 
that lift the sword shall perish by the sword," 
and "They that bear the sword, bear it not in vain, 
for they also are Ministers of God to execute 
wrath upon the disobedient." Especially have 
doubtful souls puzzled themselves with the Nine- 
teenth Chapter of Revelation. After the descent 

19 



20 



Christ Lord of Battles 



of the Celestial City, comes modulation of move- 
ment. The New Jerusalem seems to vanish and 
in its place are horsemen and the world-wide bat- 
tlefield of Armageddon. False prophets and wild 
beasts and the armies of the nations pass in rapid 
array. The one who leads the battle is called 
the Word of God. "I, John, saw the heavens 
opened and a great white horse and He that sat 
thereon is called Faithful and True. In righteous- 
ness doth He judge and make war. And His eyes 
are a flame of fire and He is arrayed in garments 
sprinkled with blood, and out of His mouth pro- 
ceeded a sharp sword that He should smite the 
nations. And He treadeth the winepress of the 
Wrath of God Almighty." Are our fine sensibil- 
ities shocked, forsooth, by a Christ at the head 
of a Cavalcade, and do we show preference for 
the Quaker-like, meditative Christ with His halo? 
It is a question that deserves to be neither begged 
nor baited; it is a "hungry question, " as Carlyle 
says, that deserves to be fed. 

One of the greatest of English thinkers, and 
indeed one of the greatest of all modern thinkers 
whatsoever, Matthew Arnold, about one-quarter 
century ago, gave to the world of thought a new 



The Christ of Battle 



21 



definition of God, a definition that has given phil- 
osophic service multiplied thousands of times since. 
"God is the stream of tendencies not ourselves 
that makes for righteousness." Supposedly the 
least that Arnold could have meant by this defini- 
tion of God was a confidential discernment of the 
realism of God in human history. The finest his- 
torians of ancient or modern times, Heroditus, St. 
Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Morley, have presup- 
posed a Divinity shaping our ends, rough hew 
them how we will, a Deity with secret disposition 
of kings and kingdoms, wars and pestilences — a 
mighty "stream of tendencies not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness." 

As one takes a look into the common-school- 
book of history it requires often more violent ex- 
ercise than a mental somersault to believe this 
Calvanistic sovereignty of God, God the pilot of 
the ship. To consider the long ages of darkness 
and retrogression of the first ten Christian Cen- 
turies, or the unutterable miseries inflicted on the 
seaboard of North Europe by the Norsemen, or 
the complicated agonies of the feudal wars of 
marauding barons till Charlemagne, or the state 
of Europe when the Black Death swept away one- 



22 Christ Lord of Battles 

half her population, or the desolation of Germany 
in the Thirty Years' War that reduced her popula- 
tion from thirty to twelve millions, or today's 
"Pentecost of Calamity," as Owen Wister calls it, 
— Poland, Belgium, Servia, Armenia, the world, — 
then comes room for wonderment, how shall we 
redefine this "stream of tendencies not ourselves 
that makes for righteousness?" For all this 
blood spilling and heart-burning there must be 
more than poetic justice and more than Emer- 
sonian compensation in the philosophy, 

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the 
throne — 

Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and behind the dim 
unknown 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 
His own. 

But does He any more than "keep watch ?" As 
one looks at the revolving wheel of a wagon, one 
half the spokes are going forward and one half 
seem to be going backward. So the trustful hope 
of the world has been that not alone is there 
Providence, but a progressive Providence despite 
all the backward eddies of evil. 

There has been no other people in universal 
history so obsessed with the conviction of God in 



The Christ of Battle 23 



history as the Hebrews. Their prophets and law- 
givers declared the whole great tidal wave of 
human passions and ends to be determined and con- 
trolled, to the point of predestination, by God. 
From Abraham and Ur of the Chaldees, through 
the miserable slavery of the hot valley of Egypt, 
this "stream of tendencies not ourselves'' led them 
to their New Jerusalem. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, vindicated God squelching Moab and 
Ammon and Philistia and Babylon, in the interest 
of His chosen Israel. Even through the carnage 
and passion of the siege of Jerusalem and through 
every complication of disaster and waves and 
storms of calamity, Israel held fast its profession 
of faith in God's play and work in history. "Why 
do the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing! 
God Jehovah dwelleth in the heavens and laugheth 
them to scorn!" 

Adjust the focus of the historic telescope 35 
centuries back. The rise of the God-idea in the 
creative period of the history of Israel and its 
growth strides through centuries of twisted and 
gnarled fortune is a dancing romance and, if it 
were written up by Chesterton or Shaw, would 
read with dazzle enough to blind. Look at the 



24 



Christ Lord of Battles 



grave and suspended moments of Hebrew history, 
the high water-marks of wars and battles, if you 
would see Israel's dominant idea of God. It was 
not for naught that Israel meant "El-does-battle," 
and it was not for naught that Israel styled itself 
after Jehovah-El, its warrior God. The battle- 
field was the cradle in which the confederation of 
Israel was nursed, it was the smithy in which it 
was welded into solidity. In times of peace alas I 
and too often! the regard of Israel for Jehovah- 
El became depressingly dormant; but, sound the 
note of alarm, and the old regard was recalled 
into awakened and suppliant and militant activity. 
Especially in Israel's early history note how the 
tribal God was a Lord God of Battle, with tu- 
multuary signs and wonders, concentrating His 
power upon the local benefits of His chosen people. 
Take the hegemony of Sisera that assembled at 
Kishon and the irretrievable defeat through Deb- 
orah and Barach, or tak'e the defeat of the Midi- 
anites by Gideon, or the destruction of Jericho by 
Joshua, or the whole series of half-abortive cam- 
paigns from Gilgal to Shiloh by which the Israel- 
ites mastered the central plateau of Palestine, or 
the last mighty achievement of Joshua against the 



The Christ of Battle 



25 



king of Hazor at Merom (with its object to open 
up Galilee and the North to conquest), or take 
the first victories over the girdle of fortified 
Canaanitish cities from Acco to Bethshean, and the 
consequent tribute of all the enclaves of Canaan 
to Israel — all this glorious history afforded the 
Hebrews a transcendant idealism and a creed of 
God as the God of Battle and Imperialism. 

In times of peace and prosperity the interest of 
Israel in God sagged like an unused rope. Baal, 
a kind of new Dionysus, the divinity of harvests, 
became attractive to the point of peril. Again and 
again the Philistines from the low-lying plains that 
skirt Judah, would harass and press the Israelites 
about Sharon and Dothan. The shame of Israel 
after her Philistine defeats would lead to revivals 
of religious feeling of highest exaltation and ecsta- 
sy. Religion and patriotism would again be identi- 
fied, and Jehovah-El, the God of Battles, would be 
persuaded to new victories. 

The latter history of Israel against her greater 
enemies, — Assyria, Babylon, Egypt — recounts the 
same pseudo-glorious creed of the Battle-God. 
True, some of the prophets declared for higher 
conceptions of God, but they were thanked alas! 



26 Christ Lord of Battles 



with stones. Amos and Jeremiah particularly de- 
clared God's leadership of Israel entirely de- 
pendent upon Israel's righteous behaviour; but 
even so, God was declared by the prophets to be 
God of Battles, and to rule His enemies with a 
rod of iron. 

Take as a test case the military treatment ac- 
corded the City of Jericho by the invading Israel- 
ites under Joshua. This "City of Fragrance," 
Jericho, lay in the bloody ground of the Jordan 
Valley eight hundred feet below the level of the 
sea. It was a highway for contending armies be- 
tween Assyria and Egypt, a buffer state like Bel- 
gium, to be buffeted between hostile powers. And 
it came to pass that when the children of Israel 
came to the Jordan, the morning gate-way into 
the Promised Land, the waters of Jordan divided 
and the priests bore the ark of the covenant of 
Jehovah to the opposite bank on dry land. (There 
might be room for argument here, as to the ideal- 
istic and subjective elements introduced, for the 
Jordan several times annually sank low enough 
for travellers to ford. But to hasten the story on, 
with a fig for disputed points!) And Joshua set 
up twelve stones at Gilgal and made a sanctuary 



The Christ of Battle 



27 



and addressed the people saying, "When your 
children shall ask, what mean these stones at Gil- 
gal, then shall ye say Jehovah dried up Jordan 
as He did the waters of the Red Sea, that all the 
earth might know that Jehovah is mighty !" And 
then Jehovah appeared to Joshua in a vision say- 
ing, I will give into thy hand Jericho, and the King 
thereof, and the mighty men of valour. The story 
of the grewsome parade of the army of Israel 
for seven days about Jericho is school-boy romance 
to everyone. But when one attributes the fall of 
the City of Jericho to the Divine he must make at 
least slight room in his calculation for the bar- 
barity of pillage that ensued. It was as bad as 
the Spanish sacking of Holland, or the German 
rape of Belgium ! And they utterly destroyed the 
City, men and women, old and young, ox, sheep, 
and ass, with the edge of the sword. Rahab the 
harlot alone was spared. And they burned the 
City, with fire, and all that was within! Alas! 
did the Kaiser read his Old Testament too much? 
And how shall we compare Joshua with Attila? 

As one looks back over the teeter-totter of his- 
tory it appears that Judaism approaches to the 
blood-red ambition of Mahomet. But whatever 



28 Christ Lord of Battles 



may be the faults of Jewish theocracy, it is as 
accurate as a hair-balance to say that they wor- 
shipped a Messiah of Samson-like and David-like 
qualities who would slay His enemies with a rod 
of iron. And when urged on by the idealizing 
power of the soul the Hebrews formulated the 
Ideal Man of the Golden Age, it was natural for 
them to picture Him as "glorious in strength," 
holding for a scepter a rod of iron. 

Now Jesus of Nazareth grew up in the atmos- 
phere of these military ideals. He read His Bible 
and saw the prevalent idea of Messiah, the War- 
rior God. His mother must have recounted to 
Him often the glories of Moses slaying three 
thousand in a day, of Joshua, David, Barak, in the 
heyday of Israel. Jesus often climbed the hills 
back of Nazareth to look out over the plains 
where the armies of the Lord had fought, or to 
Kishon where Elijah had slain four hundred 
prophets of Baal. As He looked He beheld the 
cohorts of Rome, symbol of her power over his 
own people. And when He went into the Syna- 
gogue on the Sabbath, He heard inflamed preach- 
ers declaim on the time when a mighty Messiah 
should crush all Israel's enemies and give her the 
coveted place in the sun. 



The Christ of 'Battle 



29 



But often Jesus, after the carpenter's work of 
the day was done, would take a quiet walk through 
the fields, scripture in hand. He would sit down 
and open to the Fifty-third of Isaiah and read the 
marvel, "He grew up as a tender plant and as a 
root out of dry ground. He has no form or 
comeliness, when we see him, and there is no 
beauty in him that we should desire him. He was 
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief. As one from whom 
men hide their faces, he was despised and we 
esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our 
griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did es- 
teem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. 
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he 
was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of 
our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are 
healed." Jesus would read the passage with won- 
der and admiration and, like Ernest in Haw- 
thorne's "Great Stone Face," He grew into the 
likeness of what He admired. 

Nature the dear old nurse took a child upon her knee 
Saying, "Here is a story book the Father hath written for 
thee." 

"Come wander with me," she said, "into regions yet un- 
trod, 

And read what is still unread in the manuscript of God." 



30 



Christ Lord of Battles 



So he wandered away and away with Nature the dear old 
nurse 

Who sang to him night and day the hymns of the Uni- 
verse. 

And whenever the way grew long, or his heart began to 
fail, 

She would sing a more marvelous song or tell a more 
wonderful tale. 

If we had journeyed with the army of General 
Allenby which recently captured the City of Jeru- 
salem, we might profitably have taken a "little 
journey/' as Hubbard calls it, to Nazareth, where 
Jesus Christ spent much of His life. The town 
lies in the northern part of Palestine; embosomed 
among the hills. There lies a little basin of land, 
about a mile from east to west, and from north 
to south, narrowing through a deep ravine out 
and on to the plains of Esdraelon, giving the basin 
the shape of a pear with a long stem. The hills 
to the north, east, and south of the basin are 
depressed and low, but the hills to the west rise 
abrupt and precipitous. There at the western ex- 
tremity of the valley, at the foot of the bluffs and 
cliffs, lies the little town of Nazareth. As one 
climbs the brow of the hill on which the little 
town is built, a most enchanting panorama is un- 
rolled, one to awaken and stir the memory of 



The Christ of Battle 



3i 



many sacred pages of Holy Writ. From this high 
point back of Nazareth one can get a view of 
Palestine for miles and miles. To the west, look- 
ing toward the Mediterranean is Mt. Carmel, be- 
ginning to the south of Samaria and extending 
northwest until it seems to plunge into the sea. 
As one looks at Mt. Carmel, covered with forests, 
gleaming in silvery curves, the history of Elijah the 
Tishbite and his disappearance in a chariot of fire 
is recalled. Looking a little further, one will see 
the most beautiful plain of North Palestine 
watered by the glittering thread of the Kishon, 
where Elijah slew the false prophets. And, be- 
yond, like ascending stairs, the mountains reach 
on for sixty miles up to snow-covered Mt. Her- 
man. Or if one returns to the east and south- 
east there lies the great plain of Esdraelon, with 
its gentle undulations, its fields of rich corn, its 
flocks and herds in luxuriant pastures, a granary 
rich and beautiful for all Palestine. Far away, 
beyond Mt. Tabor, one can seen the Valley of 
Jordan, and beyond that the hills that shade off 
into the Orient. This was the sweet enchantment 
of nature in which Jesus Christ found His nurture, 
twenty centuries back ! 

The hills of purple softness and historic asso- 



3 2 Christ Lord of Battles 



ciation were, to Him, full of the tender and brood- 
ing mercy of God. The language of nature, its 
imagery and type were to be drawn up into parable 
of the Kingdom of God. Keepers of vineyards 
pruning their vines suggested "I am the vine and 
ye are the branches," Shepherds tending their 
flocks connoted "I am the Good Shepherd.'' There 
in peaceful Nazareth the quickening of Christ's 
senses and mind found stimulus in the lights and 
shadows, the fair sunset, the prognostics of a 
storm at sea, the red sky over Mt. Carmel, the 
Light of the World coming out of the east. Here 
He grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God 
and man. 

Out of this general background and out of suc- 
ceeding centuries of scholasticism the modern 
world has gotten a conception of Jesus Christ as 
pacifist, a practitioner of an Ultra-Tolstoyan Non- 
Resistance. But when one takes a fair look into 
the moral background of Christ's religion and into 
the concrete facts of His life, how is it possible 
to present either Christ's religion or His life as 
pacifist? 

Paul was writing to a strongly militaristic city 
when he advised the Roman converts to "be in 



The Christ of Battle 33 

subjection to the higher powers, for the powers 
that be are ordained of God. He beareth not the 
sword in vain, for He is a minister of God, an 
avenger for wrath upon them that do evil." And 
again, "Render to no man evil for evil. If it be 
possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with 
all men. Be not overcome of evil but overcome 
evil with good." What is the matter, anyhow, 
with our giving full face value to the doctrine that, 
"without shedding of blood there is no remission 
of sin?" Has any sin of slavery or autocracy 
ever yet been put down in the world without shed- 
ding of blood? Why not give face value to the 
claim of the Eleventh of Hebrews that, "faith put 
to flight armies of the aliens?" Why discredit 
Jesus' assertion that, "he that hath not a sword let 
him sell his garments and go buy one?" Why be 
so gingerly with the tenth chapter of Matthew? 
— "Think not that I come to send peace on earth; 
I come not to send peace but a sword. He that 
findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth it 
for my sake shall find it." 

This entire question really hinges on whether 
Jesus Christ considered physical life, precious as 
it is, of more value than Principles and Ideals. 



34 



Christ Lord of Battles 



His own premature death shows that He did not. 
And when it came to the violation of ideals and the 
perpetration of wrongs Jesus was emphatic enough 
to say that for some men it were better that a 
millstone were hung about their necks and they 
dropped into the seal The duration of life is of 
small moment, in Christ's conception, compared 
to the quality and truth of life. Weisman, in 
discussing natural organisms, points out that the 
May-fly crowds all its joys and sorrows into five 
hours; the moth lives three days; a lion lives 
thirty-five years, the swan 300. The Russian 
Poet, Pushkin, tells of the fable of the eagle and 
the vulture. The eagle said, "How do you, a 
vulture, live to three hundred years and I only 
to thirty ?" "Come with me," said the vulture, 
and they went to the place where carrion 
abounded. The eagle concluded he would rather 
live thirty years on clean meat than three hundred 
years on carrion. 

In the moral conceptions of Christ it does not 
so much matter how long you have lived, but how. 
It is not the Methuselah quantity but the Christ 
quality. If the dead who died in Europe fought 
for Christ's ideals, for chivalry and truth, the loss 



The Christ of Battle 



35 



of physical life is not comparable to the retention 
of Christ's ideals. 

Then out spake brave Horatius, 
The Captain of the gate; 
To every man upon this earth 
Death cometh soon or late; 
And how can man die better 
Than facing fearful odds, 
For the ashes of his fathers 
And the temples of his gods. 

The conventional interpretation of the Mystic 
Christ drew an unusual supply of refreshment 
from the Sermon on the Mount, the reputed doc- 
trine of Non-Resistance to Evil. It is a doctrine 
that deserves the deepest historical and philosoph- 
ical understanding for it approaches close to the 
blood supply of Christianity. 

To establish complete and final terms with this 
doctrine of Non-Resistance, what philosophically 
does it mean? It is here that we must consent to 
Tolstoy's textual literalism and go him one better. 
''Resist not him that is evil." The text is no 
denial of the right to resist moral evil, but "do not 
show personal antagonism to him that is evil." 
On the contrary, the highest religion in the world 
urges us to "resist the devil, " and he will flee, to 
overcome evil with good. Resist the curse of na- 



36 



Christ Lord of Battles 



tional intemperance, but be kind enough to the 
bartenders to invite them to church; resist South- 
ern slavery, but win the slaveholders to higher 
ideals of liberty; resist Prussianism, but have 
enough moral concern for the German people to 
hold up to them the hope of democracy and re- 
covery from moral debacle; in a word, keep your 
soul unsoiled from bitterness to the personal agent 
of evil and at the same time show unrelenting 
anger against the evil itself. "Be ye angry and 
sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath." 

Take the world's test case of Belgium, and her 
resistance to German aggression. The chastise- 
ment of the peace of Europe is upon Belgium, 
which has grown up as a tender plant and as a 
root out of dry ground. Surely Belgium has borne 
the sorrows and griefs of Europe, was wounded 
for the whole world's transgressions, was led as a 
lamb to the slaughter, was crucified for sins not 
her own. Belgium was caught between the devil 
and the deep sea and forced to make herself the 
battleground for the most wasteful war of history. 

"Why should Belgium suffer? She had no 
European grievances or ambitions, no stake in the 
Balkans, no dread of Russia, no quarrel with Eng- 



The Christ of Battle 



37 



land, France, or Germany. It may be asserted 
that Germany or Russia or Austria or England 
willed this war, but certainly not Belgium. " Here 
indeed is the modern figure of the Fifty-third of 
Isaiah, lifted up on its cross for the sins of two 
powerful coalitions. "As sorrowful, yet always 
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as dying 
and behold she lives; as chastened and yet not 
killed." 

Should Belgium have shown Non-Resistance? 
She did ! "Resist not him that is evil." Belgium 
has resisted evil as she had divine right to do; 
but her heart is still big enough to "love enemies, 
do good to them that despitefully use her." Whom 
the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and the Allies love 
Germany so devotedly today that they are, for 
Belgium's sake and for creation's sake, going to 
chasten out of her every last drop of militaristic, 
lustful blood. "A God all mercy is a God un- 
just." 

Dr. Shelton has a rebuke to "spineless paci- 
fists:" 

God has His use to make of angry men 
Like Moses in the cruel Pharaoh land, 
Slew the Egyptian in a rage, and then 
Buried his body in the desert sand. 



3 8 Christ Lord of Battles 



And out of anger for a brother's wrong 
Grew a great nation and a mighty throne; 
And out of weakness championed by the strong 
"Israel from bondage came into his own. 

God give us angry men in every age, 
Men with indignant souls at sight of wrong, 
Men whose whole being glows with righteous rage, 
Men who are strong for those who need the strong. 

When President Wilson early in the war asked 
for peace without victory, many thought him in- 
doctrinated with Tolstoy. But read Woodrow Wil- 
son's message to Congress of December, 191 7. 
"Our present and immediate task is to win the war 
and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is 
accomplished." If these downright words had 
not been enough, consider Wilson's Baltimore 
speech, on acceptance of the challenge of the 
Kaiser for a fight to the finish. "Our answer to 
the German challenge will be sheer force, force to 
the utmost, force without stint or limit, the right- 
eous and triumphant force that shall cast every 
selfishness down into dust." • 

Is it indeed a far cry to quote the Nineteenth 
Chapter of Revelation? "I saw the heavens 
opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that 
sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in right- 



The Christ of Battle 



39 



eousness he doth judge and make war. And his 
eyes are as a flame of fire, and he is arrayed in a 
garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is 
called the Word of God." 

It must be true, if truth is at all in reach, that 
God's presence is all in all. In Him we live and 
move and have our being, and He is not gone on 
a long journey. If we take the wings of the morn- 
ing and fly to the battle-trenches of Europe He is 
there. That God battles in the field of human 
intelligence, in the realm of heart and soul, in 
Spiritual issues of Good against Evil, is indeed the 
hope of the world. And that battle is as fierce 
now as when Abraham fought it on the fields of 
Mamre, or when the hermits struggled in the 
monasteries. With all our advance of material 
science we have done naught to lessen but only 
perhaps to increase the forces of that conflict with 
evil. Phillips Brooks declares that in this spiritual 
conflict the life of God Himself is at stake. "God 
struggles with the enemy and is able to subdue him 
only in agony of strife. I do not know," says 
Brooks, "what are the depths of the mystery, but 
I know that evil is a horrible thing and that Divin- 
ity itself grapples with and subdues it only in pain. 



40 



Christ Lord of Battles 



What pain may mean to Infinity, we do not know, 
but the symbol of God's struggle is blood, and 
without the shedding of blood there is no remission 
of evil." 

About five miles to the south-east of Jerusalem 

is the little town of Bethlehem, Beth Lahm, 

famous in legend and history. The name, House 
of Bread, is significant of the fertility of the 
valleys near by, which abound in grain, olives, 
figs, and grapes. Since the birth of Jesus Christ 
in Bethlehem the place has forever been redeemed 
from obscurity and it is now one of the great 
pilgrim-shrines of the world. There stands the 
oldest church structure in Christendom, the Church 
of the Nativity, supposedly built by Constantine. 
In the grotto nearby are lighted candles and costly 
gifts. A silver star is set in the floor of the crypt, 
around which are the words, in Latin, "Here was 
born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ." Pilgrims 
from all parts of the world have found great satis- 
faction in visiting the shrine. The reason for the 
greatness of the little town is to be found in the 
early pages of Matthew. "When Jesus was born 
in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the 
King, behold wise men from the East. — For it is 



The Christ of Battle 41 



written, Thou Bethlehem of Judea art in no wise 
least among the thousands of Judah, for out of 
thee shall come one who is to be ruler of Israel. — 
And He shall be our Peace." 

Today, about sixty miles north of Philadel- 
phia in American stands another town of Bethle- 
hem. The city was founded in 1742 by a most 
pious and godly people, the Moravian Brethren. 
By some trick of history the American Bethlehem 
has become the centre for the manufacture of shot 
and shrapnel for fighting the modern Armaged- 
don! The manifest of American ships would re- 
veal the tons and tons of projectile for Europe's 
battlefields. But in the great perspective of God's 
Providence, in the mighty sweep of His history, 
it shall be found that the two Bethlehems were 
serving the same purpose — that of giving the spirit 
of Christ hospitable breathing space on our planet 
The Christ of Peace is also, when need be, the 
Lord of Battles. 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord ; 
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of w T rath 
are stored; 

He is loosing the fateful lightning of His terrible swift 

sword ; 
His truth is marching on. 



42 Christ Lord of Battles 

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling 

camps ; 

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and 
damps ; 

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring 

lamps ; 
His day is marching on. 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that never calls re- 
treat ; 

He is sifting out the souls of men before His judgment 

seat; 

Oh ! be swift my soul to answer Him ! Be jubilant my 
feet ! 

Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty oi the lilies Christ was born across the sea 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me, 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men 
free 

While God is marching on. 



PART II 



THE FALL OF BABYLON AND THE SECOND ADVENT 
OF CHRIST 



"The Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto a 
man which sowed good seed in his field. But 
while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares 
among the wheat. When the blade was sprung up 
and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares 
also. The servants said, Wilt thou that we go 
and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while 
ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat also. 
Let both grow together until the harvest; and in 
the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather 
ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles 
to burn them. But gather the wheat into my 
barns." Jesus, Matthew, 13:24-30. 

"In the latter days there shall be wars and 
rumors of wars and nation shall rise against na- 
tion. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming 
on the clouds of heaven with glory and power." 
Jesus, Mark 13. 



THE FALL OF BABYLON AND THE 
SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST 



ITH the entrance of America into the con- 



▼ t vulsions of world conflict there came a 
great revival of printed interest in the ancient 
Hebrew Book of Isaiah, with its interpretations 
of war and peace. Israel Zangwill with his "The 
War God" and 'The Next Religion" has proved 
the modern Isaiah of our troubled days and turned 
our eyes to the Isaiah of old. The situations of 
Isaiah were given birth in the latter half of the 
Eighth Century B. C. Under two powerful and 
good monarchs, Uzziah and Jotham, the Kingdom 
of Judah enjoyed the greatest prosperity for the 
space of a half century. Although Judah then 
was but a little state the size of two or three 
Scottish Counties, yet King Uzziah strengthened 
its borders, increased its supremacy and resources. 
He won the port of Elath on the Red Sea, built up 
a navy, and extended commerce with the far East. 
So with wealth pouring in from tribute and com- 




45 



46 



Christ Lord of Battles 



merce Uzziah fortified the capitol and borders of 
his little principality, undertook great works of 
irrigation, and organized a powerful standing 
army. Uzziah's son Jotham continued his father's 
successes, built cities and castles, quelled rebellions 
and caused riches to flow like a stream into Jeru- 
salem. But in 735 B. C. Jotham died and Ahaz 
became King. Ahaz stepped from the harem to 
the throne and brought a mass of ruin on Judah. 
There the prophecies of Isaiah begin. 

For the period of fifty years, from his watch 
tower in Jerusalem, Isaiah employs all his states- 
manship and prophetic voice and anguish of soul 
for Judah. In those trying days of Judah's pros- 
perity her worship degenerated into idolatry and 
her morals were corrupted. Isaiah predicted 
some terrible calamity! Surely God Jehovah 
would afflict them for their iniquities ! True to 
prediction the trouble fell. In half a century 
there were four successive invasions of Judah — 
from Babylon or Assyria, from Tiglath-Pileser or 
Sargon or Sennacherib. What it cost Isaiah to utter 
those prophecies we can only partially measure. 
To blind patriotism Isaiah was for a time counted 
heretic or traitor to declare that the city of David 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 47 

and the ark of the Lord should be brought to 
desolation ! 

It will especially repay pains to read the early 
chapters of Isaiah which Ewald calls the "Great 
Judgment." A better title could hardly be pro- 
posed. Isaiah says with all boldness and with the 
cynicism of a socialistic soap-box orator that the 
Jews had despised the Holy One of Israel, that 
Jerusalem had become as Sodom and Gomorrah. 
Isaiah is radical; he cares not a fig for the fact 
that Temple services were maintained with regu- 
larity and splendour. All this was disallowed by 
the prophet and he pointed out that no costly or 
elaborate ritual could take the place of sincerity 
of heart and purpose. "I delight not in burnt 
offerings or in blood of lambs or oblations or in- 
cense — but wash you, make you clean, relieve the 
oppressed," saith Jehovah. The long period of 
prosperity under Uzziah and Jotham had blinded 
the nation and the Prophet Isaiah pulls the cur- 
tain aside to reveal the sin without concealment 
or disguise. Then Isaiah announces a severe dis- 
cipline that shall purge Judah of her sins and give 
a change of heart. "For in the day of Jehovah, 
all that is proud and haughty shall be brought 



4§ Christ Lord of Battles 



low, all the cedars of Lebanon and the high towers 
of Judah and the pleasant imagery and idols, and 
all flesh shall be brought low and Jehovah alone 
shall be exalted/' 

Victor Hugo has a fine passage of comment on 
the Second of Isaiah: 'The mind returns to its 
sins as the sea returns to the shore; the sailor calls 
it the tide, the guilty call it remorse. So God up- 
heaves the soul like the ocean." But from this 
tide of condemnation, Isaiah gives vision after 
vision of possibility which the world is still striv- 
ing to attain. "In the latter days it shall come to 
pass that Jehovah's House shall be established 
upon the mountains and all people shall flow into 
it. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and 
Jehovah shall judge between the nations. And 
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and 
their spears into pruning hooks. Neither shall 
they learn to make war any more forever." Our 
modern world seems to have gone the bitter old 
road step by step that Judah walked in the Eighth 
Century B. C. The world has grown over-rich 
and pagan and idolatrous, and the judgment of 
affliction is heavy indeed. 

We are concerned particularly now with Isaiah's 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 49 

prophecy of the Fall of Babylon. From Genesis 
to Revelation there is one city which in fact and 
symbol is execrated as the enemy of God and 
the stronghold of evil; it is Babylon. In the tenth 
chapter of Genesis the wicked people of Babel or 
Babylon, filled with Satanic pride, try to build their 
tower to heaven. Jehovah calls down upon it con- 
fusion and there God confounded all the races 
and languages of the earth. Throughout all He- 
brew history the prophets cursed Babel as the op- 
pressor of God's people, the tempter of the na- 
tions, the mother of harlots, full of all cruelty and 
wantonness. But the main count held by the Jews 
against Babylon was that in 586 B. C. Jerusalem 
was besieged and there followed the great Baby- 
lonian captivity. Nothing more momentous ever 
befell the fortunes of Israel. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of Jews went over the highway of slavery 
to Babylon. The sufferings of God's people in 
Babylon pierce the ears from the songs of David 
and Solomon. 

It is worth while to look at the city. In 
Isaiah's day Babylon was the chiefest commer- 
cial city of the world, the centre of com- 
merce from India, Africa, Arabia. Down the 



50 



Christ Lord of Battles 



Tigris and Euphrates rafts brought the riches 
of Armenia; over the seas ships brought car- 
goes from India and Egypt; over the sands 
caravans brought the riches of the world. 
The monarch of Babylon who carried the Jews into 
captivity, Nebuchadnezzar, was the chief soldier 
of the world, a kind of Kaiser of his day. 

In Babylon the captive Jews slaved at wprks of 
irrigation, ramparts of defence, pyramids and 
monuments, buildings so lavish and colossal that 
the hanging gardens of Babylon were accounted 
one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. 
In the fourteenth chapter, Isaiah directs his fire 
against Babylon. "Lift up your voices and la- 
ment! All hands of Babylon shall be feeble and 
every heart shall melt and they shall be dismayed, 
and pangs of sorrow shall take hold of them as of 
a woman in travail. Jehovah shall make the 
heavens to tremble and the earth shall be shaken 
out of her place, The stars shall not give their 
light and the sun and the moon shall be darkened. 
Their infants shall be dashed in pieces and their 
houses shall be rifled and their women despoiled. 
And Babylon shall be as when God overthrew 
Sodom and Gomorrah." 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 51 

Read also, along with Isaiah, if you can endure 
the absolute thunder of its language, the eighteenth 
Chapter of Revelation. "I, John, heard an angel 
of God crying, Behold, Babylon is fallen and be- 
come the habitation of demons. In one day she 
shall be utterly burned with fire. And the Kings 
of the earth w T ho committed evil in Babylon shall 
be destroyed. Babylon's riches are made deso- 
late. Rejoice, ye saints, for God hath judged her. 
And I saw an angel take up a millstone and cast it 
into the sea saying, So is the fall of Babylon that 
shall be no more forever." 

There is one more passage to be associated with 
the prophecy of Isaiah and Revelation; it is from 
the thirteenth Chapter of Mark. Jesus gives a 
prophecy of His second advent. "In those days 
the sun and the moon shall be darkened and na- 
tion shall rise against nation and there shall be 
wars and rumors of wars. And they shall see the 
Son of Man coming on the clouds of the heavens 
with glory and power." 

In the closing months of 19 17 a notable circle 
of Christian leaders and ministers in England is- 
sued a statement to the English Churches concern- 
ing the Second Advent of Christ. The communi- 



52 Christ Lord of Battles 

cation was copied by papers in all parts of the 
world. "The present world-war and world- 
crisis, M they argued, "point unmistakably to the 
end of the world. That the revelation of our 
Lord may be expected at any moment, to reign 
in glory over all flesh and that the completed 
church will be translated forever with the Lord." 
Today, in a thousand places and ways this cata- 
clvsmic second coming of Christ is set forth with 
great zeal and unction. With a certain caste of 
mind the Millennial Hope is made the essence of 
Christian truth. Its devotees and doctrinaires sys- 
tematically back the creed with financial resources. 
The speedy end of the Age is here, they declare. 

A clear and unmistakable definition of the creed 
is given bv one of its advocates. "Millennialism is 
the creed that Christ will come again visibly, to 
resurrect the saints and reign upon the earth for 
a thousand years. At the close of the first thou- 
sand years the unsainted dead shall be raised. 
All shall then be judged, the good admitted to 
Heaven and the bad to Hell. The physical Uni- 
verse shall then collapse and come to an end." 

It is interesting to look into the variegated his- 
tory of the doctrine of the Second Coming of 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 53 

Christ. In the early years of the Apostolic age, 
doubtless many Christians cherished the idea of 
Jesus' speedy coming. Ignatius of Antioch and 
Polycarp of Smyrna clung to the belief; but they 
died martyr deaths and no visible Christ came. 
Justin of Rome and Irenius of Lyons taught that 
Christ would come and rebuild Jerusalem and 
make it the capital of His Kingdom. But the 
creed came to grief on the hard rocks of fact; 
He came not. During the Fourth Century, when 
the world was in a state of coma and pause, when 
Christianity became the accepted religion of the 
Roman Empire, there was no longer a practical 
motive in preaching the speedy Advent. St. 
Augustine so effectively put a quietus on the agita- 
tion that it slumbered for several centuries. But 
with 1000 A. D., and the Crusades, the hope was 
fanned into a flame again. Then at the time of 
the Reformation the creed absolutely blazed. 
Rome was called the great Babylon. When John 
Huss was martyred in Bohemia the Taborites se- 
lected five cities as havens of refuge where they 
assembled in passion of religious frenzy to be 
caught up in the air by the visible Christ. 

Coming to Cromwell's time in England, the 



54 Christ Lord of Battles 



movement known as the Fifth Monarchy 
stirred up two insurrections. Ann Lee came to 
America ! Shaker settlements were formed look- 
ing to the last days and the miraculous advent of 
the Lord of Glory. So we might run on to the 
incentives supplied by the French Revolution to the 
Millennial Hope, or to the Irvingites who fixed 
the date of appearance at 1864. Joseph Smith's 
city of Zion in Utah, William Miller, Pastor 
Russell — so the prophets run. 

The theme demands a large amount of patience 
and tolerance. As the "Higher Criticism" of 
Foss has it: 

And where is Heaven? And where is Hell? In some 

vague distance dim? 
No ! they are here and now, in you, in me, in him. 
When is the judgment Day to dawn? Its true date who 

can say? 

Look at your calendar and see what day it is today. 

The Sixteenth Chapter of Revelation describes 
a tremendous world upheaval and conflict, and its 
solemn and impressive vision of God's wrath in the 
Seven Bowls is enough to make one apply it to the 
present world disaster. The word Armageddon 
means literally the "mountain of battle" and has 
reference to the famous battlefield of Megido 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 55 

where, fifteen centuries B. C, an Egyptian King 
had defeated the confederated Princes of Pales- 
tine. At Megido Joshua fought seven battles 
and there Barak gained a victory over the Canaan- 
ites, and there Joshua lost his life in battle against 
Pharaoh. There at Megido in later centuries 
Napoleon with an army of 4,000 men defeated the 
Mohammedans with 35,000. 

But the Armageddon of Revelation refers to 
the great World Battle in which the forces of 
good and evil engage to the bitter end. Do we 
have here any prediction of the World crisis; 
what warrant is there for believing its "666" is 
cypher of Napoleon or the Kaiser? 

A thorough survey of the New Testament will 
afford four possible interpretations of the Second 
Advent, any one or all four of them thoroughly 
acceptable and consistent. 

Many words of Christ lead one to believe He 
referred to His resurrection as the Second Ad- 
vent. u Verily I say unto you, this generation 
shall not pass away till all these things be ful- 
filled." "Verily there be some of you standing 
here who shall not taste of death till they see 
the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom." 



56 



Christ Lord of Battles 



Still another interpretation can fix upon Pente- 
cost and the descent of the Spirit as the Second 
Advent. "It is expedient for you that I go away, 
for if I go not away the Holy Spirit will not 
come ; and He, when He is come, will lead you into 
all truth. n 

A third interpretation is the cataclysmic one al- 
ready presented. Figurative language can be 
read literally and the visible Christ announced. 

A fourth interpretation is still open to us. It is 
John s picture in Revelation, the descent upon the 
earth of a new city, the New Jerusalem, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness. This New City shall 
evangelize into purity all our standards of life, 
redeeming to God every dark spot of the planet, 
filling every soul with His spirit, making all 
heathen to show forth the excellencies of Christ. 
In a word it is the transformation of all educa- 
tion, industry, government, social life, until every 
knee shall bow and every tongue confess that 
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 
The Kingdoms of this world then shall become 
the Kingdoms of Christ, and the knowledge of 
Him shall cover the earth as the waters cover the 
sea. The wilderness and the solitary place shall 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 57 



be made glad and blossom as the rose. Christ is 
coming a Second, a Third, a Fourth time in the 
grand, unfolding panorama of Evolution ! He 
comes ! He comes ! 

It will come! It will come! as the day comes 

When the night is done, 
And the silver streak on the ocean's cheek 

Grows into the mighty sun. 

Jesus Christ has Himself given the best inter- 
pretation to His Second Advent in His parable of 
The Harvest, in the Thirteenth Chapter of Mat- 
thew. "The Kingdom of God is likened unto 
a man which sowed good seed in his fields. But 
while he slept the enemy came and sowed tares 
among the wheat and went his way. But when 
the blade w r as sprung up and brought forth fruit, 
then appeared the tares also. So the servant of 
the householder came and said, Sir, didst not 
thou sow good seed in the field? From whence 
hath it tares? The master said, An enemy 
hath done this. And the servant said, Wilt thou 
that we go and gather the tares? But the mas- 
ter said, Nay, lest when ye gather up the tares, ye 
root up the wheat also. Let both grow together 
until the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will 



58 



Christ Lord of Battles 



say to the reapers, Gather together the tares and 
burn them, but gather the wheat into my barns." 

When the theory of Evolution first appeared 
from the pens of Darwin and Huxley and Spencer 
it was proclaimed that the human race advances 
by a slow and gradual spiral. But under the 
pens of Eucken and Bergson and the latter-day 
evolutionists we are led to believe that evolution 
takes place in cycles or crises, like the cycles or 
crises of the harvest described in Jesus' parable. 
The development of the world from Moses to 
David, from Plato to Christ, from Constantine 
to the Reformation, from the French Revolution 
to the present day has been in progressive crises, 
like the crises of planting and harvest. 

In each of these ages the Son of Man went 
forth and sowed good seed. In periods of deca- 
dence evil seed was sown. Both grew together 
until a great time of harvest. Then of a sudden, 
in some great harvest of judgment, a Reforma- 
tion, a Freeh Revolution, an American Revolution, 
God sent forth His angels to the harvest. God's 
judgments were terrible at those Armageddons- — 
a burning of tares with wailing and gnashing of 
teeth. But the grain was always gathered into 
the granary and the race went on richer. 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 59 

Who can estimate the agony of those great 
crises of the world when Jesus sits on the throne 
dividing the nations into sheep and goats. The 
struggle in Holland under William the Silent 
against the tyranny of Philip II of Spain! But 
it ended in pulling up the tares of despotism and 
reaping the harvest of liberty. The struggle of 
Alfred the Great in England, the upstriving of 
Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, the agonies of 
Kossuth in Hungary, the strife of Washington 
in America, the pleading of Kosciusko in Poland, 
the idealism of Lafayette in France, the prayers 
of Lincoln in America — all are to us symbols of 
this age-long struggle to plant the good seed of 
Christian Democracy, to uproot the tares of 
despotism, and to bring the grain of liberty into 
the barns of constitutional government. 

These great crises are days of the coming of 
the Lord. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of 
the coming of the Lord." Babylon of despotism 
is destroyed and the Spirit of God given able 
room to breathe upon the world again. 

"Behold I come quickly!" 

Since the Council of Vienna of 18 14 the world 
has gone through another crisis. Evil tares of 
militarism have been sown; Babylon has raised 



6o 



Christ Lord of Battles 



its tower in Central Europe — and Christ sent 
forth terrible reapers for four years to pull up 
the tares and conserve the wheat. The conflict 
has wearied the world for four terrible years. 
But faith or morale won. The Allies had a 
morale that was built upon Jesus' philosophy of 
the harvest — and at last it was morale that won. 

Morale is a tremendous mouthful, a word 
of nitroglycerine dynamic, a "weasel-word," in 
Roosevelt's happy phrase, that has the "power to 
suck blood," and morale as a present and future 
asset deserves to be understood to the limit of 
our ability to understand. The word has found 
utterance on every lip, but its significance, like the 
significance of ether or electricity, is not yet com- 
prehended. Morale is a hard thing to define, 
for so many physical, moral, psychical elements 
enter into its composition — nerve, dash, courage, 
enthusiasm, discipline, cohesion, faith. It was 
morale that made Cromwell's men so invincible; 
it was morale that held Washington's men to- 
gether seven years till Yorktown; it was morale 
that made Gideon's band of three hundred over- 
come the Philistines. And what shall we say 
more, for time would fail to tell of Barak, Sam- 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 61 

son, David, Samuel, who through morale sub- 
dued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, stopped the 
mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, es- 
caped the edge of the sword, from weakness were 
made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to 
flight armies of the aliens. Morale, said Napo- 
leon, is to all other things as four is to one. When 
German morale broke in November, 191 8, Ger- 
many fell like Lucifer from heaven. On Novem- 
ber 11, 191 8, took place one of the most sensa- 
tional and dramatic episodes since the Creation. 
Only a week or two before the best strategists 
declared German determination and resources ca- 
pable of another year or two of war. Then 
came the great debacle and the parlour strategists 
are still unable to compass the magnitude of it. 
Estimating guns, gases, men, aeroplanes with im- 
pressive mathematical exactitude, they figured 
that Germany could endure until the summer of 
19 19. But this estimate forgot the psychic thing 
called morale. It was the break-up of German 
morale and the triumph of Allied morale that set 
the clock of victory forward a year. This is the 
victory that overcometh the world, even our 
morale. 



62 Christ Lord of Battles 



Every true advocate of Democracy will do well 
to learn in his heart Lincoln's Gettysburg speech: 
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent a new nation, con- 
ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposi- 
tion that all men are created equal. We are en- 
gaged in a great Civil War to test whether that 
nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated 
can long endure. We are met on a great battle- 
field of that war. We have come to dedicate a 
portion of that battle-field as a final resting place 
for those who here gave their lives that that na- 
tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
that we should do this. But in a larger sense 
we cannot dedicate, we cannot hallow, we can- 
not consecrate this ground. The brave men, liv- 
ing and dead, who struggled here have conse- 
crated it far above our power to add or detract. 
The world will little note nor long remember what 
we say here, but it will never forget what they did 
here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedi- 
cated to the unfinished work which they who so 
nobly fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us, that from these 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 63 

honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which they gave the last full measure 
of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain; that this na- 
tion, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom; and that this government, of the people, 
by the people, and for the people, shall not per- 
ish from the earth." 

America's purpose in entering the conflict was 
the most Idealistic recorded in history — the tri- 
umph of the Abe Lincoln idea over the Julius 
Cssar idea, the elevation of Democracy over 
Autocracy. We entered this war to see if a na- 
tion so conceived could long endure. We are now 
met on the greatest battle-field of that war. In 
the largest sense we cannot hallow, we cannot 
dedicate, we cannot consecrate that ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who fought there have 
consecrated it far above our ability to add or de- 
tract. It rather remains to us, the living, to 
dedicate ourselves to the great task remaining be- 
fore us, that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion. Under 
God let us highly resolve that these dead shall 



64 Christ Lord of Battles 



not have died in vain — that this government of the 
people, by the people, for the people shall not 
perish from the earth. 

In the Fifth Chapter of John is recorded the 
story of Jesus' healing of the lame man at the 
Pool of Bethesda. In Jesus' day there stood 
above the Temple a great Fortress, built by Herod, 
and called Antonia. A deep ditch built at one 
side had filled with water and was called the 
Pool of Bethesda. Sick people from all over 
Palestine came to wash in it, for they thought it 
possessed miraculous powers of healing. There 
was something unique about the waters of it — 
they were intermittent because of some strange 
geology of the rocks. At the moment when the 
waters gushed forth the blind, halt, or diseased 
would get down into the pool, and he who was 
first washed would be healed. 

"And there was a multitude of the halt and 
lame at the Pool of Bethesda. And there was 
one man having an infirmity of thirty and eight 
years. And Jesus, when he saw him, knew how 
long he had been that way and said, Woulds't 
thou be made whole? And he replied, Sir, 
there is no man when the waters are troubled to 



Fall of Babylon — Second Advent of Christ 65 

help me down into them, or when I go down, an- 
other cometh before me. Jesus said, Take up your 
bed and walk." 

"The world has been living four years under 
the fortress of Europe, in its great Armageddon. 
The waters of life have been deeply troubled. 
God never meant the divine moment of the 
troubled waters to pass without their healing. 
From this great Armageddon of troubled waters 
Christ is speaking to the lame, blinded world. 
Take up thy bed and walk. 

But Babylon has fallen; it is time for the New 
Jerusalem now to arise and triumph! No re- 
straint these days is placed upon the Cosmic Urge 
and Evolution is not hibernating. And unless 
we apprehend Christ as Victor at Armageddon, 
its triumph must be called only a toy to keep 
satisfied those who are robbed of their birthright 
from God ! 



PART III 

ARMAGEDDON 



"The spirits of devils go forth unto the Kings 
of the earth and of the whole world, to gather 
them to the battle of the great Day of God Al- 
mighty. And He gathered them together into a 
place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon." 
Revelation, 16:14-16. 

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white 
horse; and he that sat thereon was called Faith- 
ful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge 
and make war. And he is clothed with a vesture 
dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word 
of God. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp 
sword, that with it he should smite the nations; 
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron. And 
he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and 
wrath of Almighty God." Revelation iq:ii~i5. 



ARMAGEDDON" 



THE concluding Book of the canon of the 
New Testament has been named the Book 
of Revelation, but the judgment of the average 
man concludes that it might more fittingly have 
been named the Book of Mystery or the Book of 
Mystification. It is not strange, however, that the 
final volume of our Bible should prove difficult to 
understand, for it belongs to a type of literature 
that has no counterpart outside the ancient Jew- 
ish Book of Daniel. The Revelation of John is 
called an Apocalypse because it is supposed to 
unveil mysteries and to disclose secrets only to 
those who possess a mystical key of interpreta- 
tion. But the Apocalypse, properly understood, 
was a treatise written to stimulate faith and hope 
and courage in a day of trouble and tribulation. 

The world circumstances in which the Christian 
Churches found themselves in the latter half of 
the First Century, were pathetic, and dangerous, 

too. A new faith of such presumptions as Chris- 

69 



Christ Lord of Battles 



tianity might expect to encounter persecution, of 
course. In the days of Paul the persecution was 
chiefly from Jewish sources and Paul himself 
suffered much from Jewish zealots. But during 
all those Jewish persecutions, the Roman Empire, 
strange to relate, was protector of the infant re- 
ligion. It was to Caesar that Paul made his ap- 
peal and as a Roman citizen he went to Rome 
for his trial. So, when in those early years Jew- 
ish fanatics attempted to create disturbance and 
riot against the Jesus-cult, the power of Rome was 
invoked to quell the disorder, and the Disciples 
were given protection and immunity. 

But toward the end of the First Century, es- 
pecially in the reigns of Nero and Domitian, the 
wind veered and the attitude of the Roman Gov- 
ernment became one of opposition and oppres- 
sion. When the Roman Emperors — Nero, Calig- 
ula, Tiberius, Claudius — -pressed the demand 
that everyone in the Empire should worship them 
as gods, it was a direct challenge to the Chris- 
tian Church. And when the Christians refused 
divine honors to the ruling powers of Rome, they 
were subject to every form of suspicion and es- 
pionage, of shame and cruelty. In such extremi- 



Armageddon 



71 



ties as these, there was apparently no help for 
the followers of Christ except in supernatural 
power, and interference from Heaven. When the 
simple truth could not triumph through preach- 
ing and ministry, when the rough, brutal world 
would crush grace and spirituality in their swad- 
dling clothes, then the Christian recourse was to 
believe that the Arm of Omnipotence would be 
bared to smite down the wickedness of Rome, and 
to give Triumph to Jesus Christ. 

Suppose for a moment that in the present world 
strife, the nations in it had been confined to Bel- 
gium and Germany. Germany, arrogant and in- 
solent, sweeping down in military strength on help- 
less Belgium and proceeding to all the horrors of 
outrage and cruelty. Suppose Belgium standing 
quite alone with no benevolent protectors, as did 
the Christians of that bloody First Century. 
Without any hope of deliverance, might not Bel- 
gium have looked upward to Heaven and pleaded 
for some divine chastisement to fall on Germany? 
And if Belgium had then put her sufferings and 
despairing hopes into literary form, she might 
have produced such a book as Revelation. Or 
take the unhappy Armenians with no army of de- 



72 



Christ Lord of Battles 



fence, with no strong defenders to avenge their 
wrongs. In their despair and trouble and sorrow, 
would not they have written a kind of Apocalyptic 
Book of Revelation? Its pages would breathe 
with just such anguish-laden prayers for the speedy 
coming of the Great Vindicator, the All-Mighty 
God to protect and preserve His saints. 

The Book of Revelation is just such a cry for 
sudden and overwhelming aid in, the time of 
trouble and tribulation. In the fiery days of A. D. 
97, when the Emperor Domitian was conducting 
his widespread persecution of the Christians, a 
certain John, presumably the Apostle John, took 
refuge on the Isle of Patmos, on the iEgean 
Sea. There John had a series of visions. The 
great message of the Book of Revelation is the 
Triumphant coming of the Christ. That Jesus 
who in the "days of His flesh," had gone about 
in Palestine in barefoot humility was now to come 
clothed in the power of Heaven, to be enthroned 
the Lord of the Universe. This was the divine, 
disclosure, the great Revelation — Christ was to 
be King of Kings and Lord of Lords and the 
Kingdoms of this world were to become the King- 
doms of our Lord and His Christ. It was not 



Armageddon 



73 



in some far-off future; "behold the time is at 
hand." 

Perhaps no other country in the world has been 
the centre and radiating source of so much re- 
ligious influence as Asia Minor and Palestine. 
That small neck of country reaching from Egypt 
to Constantinople was the spot from which Juda- 
ism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity have ra- 
diated their subtle and persuasive influences into 
the world. And along with Mecca and Jerusalem 
the geographer of religion will associate Ephesus 
of Ionia. The city of Ephesus has done more 
, than any mathematics can calculate to shape the 
plastic mind of the world into its finest moulds, for 
out of Ephesus came Homer's Iliad and John's 
Revelation. 

In Ephesus John is known to have passed the 
latter years of his ministry. Already when John 
came to Ionia, Christianity had found strong 
foothold there and seven strong churches were 
flinging their light into the surrounding darkness. 
Christianity had already broken the shell of the 
Jewish religion and had thrown itself upon the 
Gentile world to redeem it. The Church had a 
hard time to guard its purity from the aggressive 



74 



Christ Lord of Battles 



coil of the world in which it lived. The Apostle 
John was called to Ephesus just at this time when 
the Roman persecutions and the pagan vices were 
both threatening to engulf the Church. It was a 
situation the most fearful and critical in the his- 
tory of that perturbed and confused First Cen- 
tury. Look at the Book of Revelation then as a 
message directed at one of the most perilous con- 
junctures of history. 

The lurid pictures of the Sixteenth and Nine- 
teenth Chapters of Revelation are worth rehearsal 
word for word. "I, John, saw the Heavens 
opened and a great white horse, and he that sat 
thereon is called Faithful and True. In righteous- 
ness doth he judge and make war. And his eyes 
are a flame of fire, and he is arrayed in garments 
sprinkled with blood. And his name is called the 
Word of God. And out of his mouth proceedeth 
a sharp sword that he should smite the nations, 
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron. And 
he treadeth the winepress of the wrath of God 
Almighty." "Spirits of demons go forth unto the 
kings of the whole world to gather them together 
unto the w r ar of the great day of God. And they 
gathered them together into the place which is 
called in Hebrew Armageddon." 



Armageddon 



75 



This dramatic and stirring account of the Christ 
of war, the Christ of Armageddon, may arouse a 
just query as to the real nature of Christ's office 
in the world. Does His Kingdom progress by 
"Blood and Iron?" A fair statement should be 
given to the query from men who speak from ex- 
perience. Franklin had it, "There never was 
good war nor a bad peace." And Jefferson, "I 
view war as the greatest scourge of mankind." 
Jean Jacques is quoted: "War is the foulest 
fiend ever vomited from the jaws of hell." Na- 
poleon himself avowed, "The more I study the 
world, the more I am convinced of the inability 
of force to create anything durable." Everyone 
knows what Sherman thought of war. General 
Sir Charles Napier has best summed up the con- 
tention: "To me, military life is like dancing up 
a long room with a mirror at the end, against 
which we cut our faces — and so the deception 
ends." Little Peterkin has a way of putting 
a poser to the apologist for war: 

But what good came of it at last? 

Quoth little Peterkin, 
Why, that I can not tell, said he, 

But 'twas a famous victory. 

But from Moses and Aristotle to the present 



7 6 



Christ Lord of Battles 



day apologists have shown that war develops a 
chivalric and righteous world and has its sure 
part in the spiritual and moral economy and order 
of God. It is a paradox that proves more than 
swank. 

Every student of history must be familiar with 
that episode of the Sixteenth Century connected 
with Mary Queen of Scots, the episode of the 
Spanish Armada. When Mary Queen of Scots 
bequeathed to Philip II of Spain her rights to the 
English throne, the cause of religious progress and 
Anglo-Saxon democracy was imperiled. Great 
fleets of vessels were gathered in the harbours of 
Spain. At last, 130 vessels, the greatest naval 
armament that had ever appeared upon the At- 
lantic, set sail from Lisbon for the English Chan- 
nel. A fever of excitement swept England, but 
never did any people more splendidly rise to the 
defence of their native land from the invader. In 
July of 1588 the Armada was first sighted off the 
English coast. It swept up the channel in the 
form of a great crescent, seven miles from tip 
to tip. The English ships that opposed were only 
80. But Admiral Drake sent fire ships to ter- 
rorize them. The Spaniards sailed north around 



Armageddon 



77 



the British Isles. The fierce storms of the north- 
ern seas dashed many of the Armada upon the 
Scottish and Irish coasts. When intelligence of 
the great disaster came to King Philip of Spain, 
he said, "God's will be done; I sent my fleet to 
fight against England, not against the elements." 
This great victory of the Anglo-Saxon over des- 
potic Spain was as important to God's redemptive 
purpose in History as the defeat of the Turks at 
Tours. The victory marked the rise of a new 
democratic state, and it marked the turning point 
in the great duel for freedom of religious thought 
and worship. It insured the future of Protestant- 
ism to the world. Are we to conclude that the 
Armada episode, in its results to the world, has 
no part in God's economy? 

A great American has recently designated the 
world-war a "Holy War," and one is led to won- 
der what can possibly be meant by a u Holy War." 
Take the wars of Cromwell anent. Shall we call 
them "Holy Wars?" Cromwell's men were men 
of religion, with no swearing, drinking or vice 
known among them. They were a body of Bible- 
reading, God-fearing, praying men, advancing to 
battle singing Psalms. The battle of Naseby in 



78 



Christ Lord of Battles 



which Cromwell's enemies were irretrievably 
beaten, he ascribed to God. King Charles was 
tried and executed as traitor, tyrant, and enemy 
to the public good of the nation, and Cromwell 
was made Lord High Protector of England. In 
the wars with Scotland and Holland, Cromwell at 
the famous battle of Dunbar of 1651 met enemies 
twice his number and the fanatical Ironsides drove 
them like chaff before the wind. In Cromwell's 
Parliament every member was a religious zealot 
who spent much of his time in Scripture exegesis, 
prayer and exhortation. Fighting for Protestant 
Huguenots in France, warning the Papacy to be- 
ware the sound of English guns in the Vatican, 
wrestling for hours in prayer before battle, Crom- 
well in his entire regime was given over to the 
Idealism of the conduct of a "Holy War." 

Or what shall we say of the Crusades of the 
Middle Ages, when Christians took the sword of 
battle and the Cross of Christ to go out to win 
the tomb of our Lord from the Saracens? Were 
they Holy Wars? In 1095 Pope Urban called 
the dignitaries of the Church, Abbots, Bishops, 
Archbishops, to the Council of Clarmont. With 
great gifts of eloquence the Pope pictured the 



Armageddon 



79 



outrages offered the Christian pilgrims in Jerusa- 
lem by the infidel Mohammedans. He stirred the 
Council to its profoundest depths by urging how 
pious and meritorious a thing it would be to have 
the chivalry of Europe send its waves of military 
strength against the unspeakable Turk. To all 
who would enlist in the Holy War the Pope prom- 
ised remission of sin and eternal life. The en- 
thusiasm of Europe burst all restraints and princes 
and nobles, monks and anchorites, saints and sin- 
ners, rich and poor, hastened to enroll themselves 
beneath the standard of the Cross. One band of 
50,000 men, women, and children under Peter 
the Hermit, and Walter the Penniless, crossed the 
Bosphorus to perish miserably of hunger, thirst, 
and slaughter. One-half the Knighthood of Eu- 
rope under Robert, Duke of Normandy, assembled 
at Constantinople. The line of their march had 
been whitened by the bleached bones of half their 
number, but on they pressed with all zeal to the 
City of David. When the Holy City burst upon 
their view a delirium of joy seized the Crusaders. 
With bare feet and uncovered heads they advanced 
and the Holy City was taken by storm. One of 
the Christian Knights writing home said, "If you 



8o 



Christ Lord of Battles 



desire to know what was done to the infidels found 
there, know that in the Porch of Solomon's Tem- 
ple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up 
to the knees of their horses." The recapture of 
Jerusalem by the Turks and the intelligence of the 
disaster caused other waves of Crusading Zeal. 
Emperor Frederick of Germany was drowned, 
Richard Coeur de Lion lost for years. Or look at 
the Children's Crusade. Isaiah was quoted — 
"The hand of a little child shall lead them," and 
40,000 children crossed the Alps following the 
Pied Piper. They looked for the Mediterranean 
Sea to open miraculously and give them passage 
to the Promised Land. The few children who 
survived, alas, were sold as slaves in the Moham- 
medan slave markets of Alexandria. Were these 
also Holy Wars ? Doubtless great tidal waves of 
good came out of them. Gibbon says that out 
of these Crusades came a stimulant to trade that 
whitened the seas with merchant sails, a crumbling 
of Feudalism, a transposition of culture from East 
to West, in a word, the seed planting of the Re- 
naissance of learning and discovery. It may pro- 
voke a smile en passant, but yet, through battle and 
blood, the world "do move" and Christ achieves! 



Armageddon 



81 



Carlyle's estimate of Mahomet has been so 
long before the world and has become so reputable 
that it deserves repeated reading. "Mahomet is 
found propagating his Religion by the sword. 
. . . We do not find, of the Christian Religion, 
either that it always disdained the sword, when 
once it got one. Charlemagne's conversion of the 
Saxon was not by preaching. I care little about 
the sword! I will allow a thing to struggle for 
itself in the world, with any sword or tongue or 
implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let 
it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the 
utmost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, what- 
soever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long run, 
conquer nothing which does not deserve to be con- 
quered. What is better than itself, it cannot put 
away, but only what is worse. In this great duel, 
Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong; 
the thing which is the deepest-rooted in Nature, 
what we call truest, that thing and not the other 
will be found growing at last." Maybe Carlyle, in 
this and in what follows, was preparing his coun- 
trymen for this theology of the God of Battles, 
with Nature a kind of Umpire, arbiter over the 
issue. "Here," Carlyle continues, "in reference 



82 



Christ Lord of Battles 



to much that there is in Mahomet and his success, 
we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; 
what a greatness, composure of depth and toler- 
ance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into 
the Earth's bosom — your wheat may be mixed with 
chaff, chopped straw T — no matter; you cast it into 
the kind, just Earth; she grows the wheat — the 
whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, 
says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat 
is growing there; the good Earth is silent about 
all the rest." To the blood-reddened nations at 
war Carlyle's complacency and time-patience may 
be an irritating persiflage, but the thinking world 
will see that the great English thinker ("greatest 
English thinker," says Ruskin), was not far afield 
in turning History's Providence to the great God 
of Battle. 

The mere thought of the flow of blood makes 
for a warm revulsion in any heart, most of all in 
the hearts of the followers of Jesus Christ. But 
in the mighty sweep of God's Providence in His- 
tory, we shall see that when a divine principle 
is at stake, even human life must bleed for it. 
"Without the shedding of blood there is no re- 
mission of sin." 



Armageddon 



83 



Almost every week sailors crossing the North 
Atlantic report the presence of huge icebergs, 
broken from the ice floes of the Arctic Sea and 
floating from the Polar Ocean toward the Equator. 
Often the huge carcases of ice will stretch a mile 
from stem to stern, driving its mighty avalanche 
hard, cruel, and irresistible. It was such a mon- 
ster of the deep that sunk the Titanic with awful 
loss of human cargo. Soon these giant cakes of 
ice meet the warm currents of the Gulf Stream, 
and counter influences eat away their foundations 
and devour their vitals. Sailors declare that from 
time to time they see these skyscraper icebergs 
capsize and establish new centres of gravity and 
the process goes on and on until the hugh mass 
quite melts away and disappears in the blue waters 
of the open ocean. 

In quite similar fashion great icy institutions 
have swept from the Polar past into our modern 
life. Against these icy institutions — slavery, des- 
potisms, the liquor traffic — the warm currents of 
modern progress have been beating. Again and 
again they have been compelled to shift centre 
of gravity until they melted. Many a ship of 
State was in danger and the warm life-blood of 



84 Christ Lord of Battles 



Lincoln and millions was given to melt it up. The 
huge ice floes were melted by blood of Mazzini in 
Italy, of Lafayette in France, of Washington in 
America, of William the Silent in Holland, of 
Kosciusko in Poland. The warm flow of blood 
would alone cure these great curses of the world. 
Armageddon goes on always, for without the shed- 
ding of blood there is no remission of sin. 

Again and again and yet again the Armageddon 
of the world has come, but each time "God stood in 
the shadow keeping watch above His own." Ger- 
many has this time been the cause of our latest 
Armageddon. Anyone who has lived at all during 
these last four years knows the terrible menace 
to Christendom and Democracy and World Order 
brought on by the new Armageddon. Against the 
great Power, the modern Babylon, Christ went 
forth again with sword of conflict. We do not 
hesitate to say that Christ was in the battle, that 
Christ was the stake of the battle, that Christ 
was the victor of the Battle. 

Mr. Elihu Root, in introducing the Archbishop 
of York at Carnegie Hall, made the occasion sig- 
nificant with the words: "This is a war between 
Christ and Odin-Thor. The war is not so much 



Armageddon 



85 



a struggle for Servia or Poland or Belgium, as 
it is a struggle for the principle of Christianity." 
President Wilson defined the three-fold aim of 
the war — to make an end of wars and armaments 
and to introduce a League of Peace, to make the 
world safe for Democracy against Autocracy, and 
to make moral law the rule between nations large 
and small. But beyond these three principles, 
great as they are, it is asserted that the Allies 
battled for something greater and inclusive, name- 
ly, the Kingdom of God; that the utmost thing at 
stake on the Western front was the cause of the 
Christ against the Anti-Christ. 

Even a secular writer like Colonel Watterson 
of the Louisville Courier Journal, says the Ar- 
mageddon on in Europe was not so much for the 
issue of Democracy against Autocracy, as for the 
religion of Christ against paganism. "As the 
gentle Nazarene of the hillsides of Judea has 
survived every assault in history, He will survive 
this. As the Crusaders fought against the Mo- 
hammedans, so we fight today against the new 
Anti-Christ." 

The sixty-third chapter of Isaiah opens with 
one of the loftiest strains of poetic prophecy; it 



86 



Christ Lord of Battles 



is one of the high spots of the Hebrew literature. 
The view takes in Jerusalem and the mountain 
regions and runs down to the Valley of the Jor- 
dan and the Dead Sea. As Isaiah stands so, a 
kind of watchman wondering what of the night, he 
sees a stranger approaching him, coming from 
the country where the heathen, the enemies of 
Israel, live. Isaiah sees a heroic figure, with giant 
stature and head high and proud, with steps free 
and stately, climbing the hills toward Jerusalem, 
the Zion of God. Isaiah points attention to the 
stranger's garments and they are marked and 
stained with blood. Isaiah is filled with amaze- 
ment and he challenges the newcomer as a watch- 
er . 

man might challenge the approach to a camp. 
"Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed 
garments from Bozrah?" And the answer from 
the stranger is, "I that speak in righteousness, 
mighty to save." As he comes nearer the mysteri- 
ous and awful blood stains upon his clothing be- 
come more clear and Isaiah says, "Wherefore art 
thou red in thine apparel?'' The stranger an- 
swers, "I have trodden the winepress of the wrath 
of God alone." "Wherefore is this blood sprin- 
kled upon my garments." 



Armageddon 



87 



What could it mean that a stranger visitant 
should come up from Edom with bloody garments 
from Bozrah? The answer lay in the fact that 
Edom was the country where Israel's most in- 
veterate enemies lived. No other nation pressed 
so hard or gave such unrelenting trouble to Isaiah's 
people as did Edom. And when the Conqueror 
from Edom tells IsaialT he has undertaken the 
defense of Israel and trodden Edom under foot, 
we can understand something of the power and 
comfort of such a vision to the Hebrew heart. 
But Isaiah was never satisfied with these partial 
mercies. The Conqueror from Edom is sugges- 
tion of a haunting Messiah, his bloody garments 
the suggestion of the blood spots of Calvary. 

One of the most strategic bodies of water in 
the world, because of its massive historical in- 
terest and its military importance, is the River 
Rhine that accomplishes a passage through Europe 
from Switzerland to the North Sea. The Rhine 
looms up in our imaginations today with fiery 
images and with new historical interest because 
"Our boys" have recently reached and crossed its 
banks, and the old German "Watch On The 
Rhine" will never again mean for military ambi- 



88 



Christ Lord of Battles 



tion what it once meant. Swollen by the waters 
of many tributaries, the Rhine rolls on majestic- 
ally through Germany and Holland to its destina- 
tion in the seas. Like many other great rivers, the 
Nile, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Rhine 
bifurcates again and again near its mouth, divides 
into five channels and flows off into the North Sea. 
If we trace the Rhine back, to its source and foun- 
tain-head, we arrive at the St. Gothard Mountains 
in Switzerland, 8,000 feet above the level of the 
sea. With the impetuous rush of swirling, foam- 
ing waters, through many a silvan glade and rocky 
defile and dark forest, the infant Rhine flows into 
Lake Constance. In this beautiful lake the stream 
pauses for a meditative moment like a pensive 
tourist and then plunges down through Germany 
for its 227-hour journey to the sea — through the 
Fatherland and on to the Father of Waters. 

Just at the great bend of the river — where the 
Rhine departs from Switzerland for Germany, 
stands the charming Swiss City of Basel, one 
of the most ancient cities of Switzerland, dating 
back to the time of Julius Caesar and his Hel- 
vetian campaigns. Basel is perhaps best known 
to Western tourists through the fame of its ca- 



Armageddon 



8 9 



thedral, the burial place of the great Erasmus. 
Now, the city of Basel is peculiar and distinct from 
all the other cities of the Swiss Republic in this, 
that its time is set one hour ahead of the time 
of all the rest of Switzerland. When the clock 
sounds out 12 in Basel, it tolls out 11 in the rest 
of the country. An explanation for this is to be 
found in an old Swiss legend of rare charm and 
beauty. 

It is oft repeated that "once upon a time," in 
the Middle Ages, the city of Basel, then a walled 
city, was besieged like Jericho by an army of 
enemies who encamped without the city gates. 
They would compel the city into starvation and 
capitulation. A conspiracy of base traitors took 
place within the city walls, and the conspirators 
plotted to throw open the town gates to the hostile 
army. The plan of agreement of the conspiracy 
was to await the solemn hour of 12 of a dark 
midnight, to watch for the old town clock to strike 
out its ominous 12 strokes, then to creep noiselessly 
to the walls and throw the gates open to the enemy. 
But at the last moment the conspiracy was dis- 
covered by the old keeper of the clock, who deter- 
mined upon a way to outwit the enemy. The old 



9 o 



Christ Lord of Battles 



patriot determined to defeat their treason. At 
1 1.30 of that dark night he climbed into the clock- 
belfry which served the cause of Swiss liberty, just 
as the old Boston Church tower and Paul Revere 
served the cause of American freedom. The clock- 
keeper pushed the hands one hour ahead, so that 
at midnight the old clock, instead of striking 12, 
struck a solemn and ponderous one. The traitors 
below, missing the appointed time by an hour, 
thought that their plans had miscarried and so de- 
ferred until the next night. Next day the old 
keeper of the clock revealed the conspiracy to the 
Lord High Mayor; the conspirators were appre- 
hended and put to death. From that day to this 
the Mayor of Basel decrees the time of Basel shall 
be one hour ahead of that of the rest of Switzer- 
land, to remind the people of their great deliver- 
ance from treason and tyranny. 

A new hour has struck for the World! The 
clock of our thinking has been set forward in honor 
of our Great Deliverance. Someone has said that 
August, 1914, was a knife cutting Universal His- 
tory in two. The last four years have been nerv- 
ous, hectic, feverish, disquieting, a Reformation 
hour full of destiny, a Calvary hour crammed with 



Armageddon 



91 



futurity. The world is saying, "Mine hour is 
come ; glorify me with the glory I had in the golden 
age of the past." Tradition has it that in the 
Appalachian regions of the South there were men 
and women who from 1861-1865 never knew that 
the Civil War was on. Years afterward they 
came down from their backyards into the towns 
of Virginia and the Carolinas, to learn that the 
nation had passed through a great spiritual trans- 
formation. If any man can have passed through 
this great Armageddon of the world without a 
spiritual, mental transformation within, to cor- 
respond to the transformation in the world with- 
out, he is like those people of the Appalachians 
during the Civil War. Such a person might as 
well have lived on Mars or Jupiter or the Moon. 
But with most of us the mental and moral tonic 
from the Hour of Armageddon has been good. 
Our minds have taken on new dimensions and 
perspective of Internationalism; our souls have 
poured out to Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Armenians, 
whom having not seen we love; our hearts have 
beat to the music of exalted patriotism. The great 
clock of our thinking and feeling has been set 
forward in honor of our great deliverance from 



9 2 



Christ Lord of Battles 



bondage and the shadows of death. Shall this 
Armageddon be followed by the New Jerusalem? 

If in this hour of the world anyone can classify 
Christ as Pacifist he has indeed missed the mes- 
sage of Armageddon and can hardly be expected 
to have vision enough to take in the subsequent 
New Jerusalem. Is the shedding of Armageddon 
blood in vain, or does it give the world remission 
of the sin of autocracy and promise of the New 
Day? 



PART IV 

THE CHRIST OF PEACE 



"And they shall beat their swords into plough- 
shares and their spears into pruning hooks; na- 
tion shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
shall they learn war any more forever." Isaiah 
2:4. 

"Jesus Christ hath broken down the middle 
wall of partition, abolishing enmity by the cross, 
and so making peace" Paul, Ephesians 2:14-16. 

"Put on the whole armour of God, girding your 
loins with truth, having put on the breastplate of 
righteousness, having shod your feet with the 
preparation of the gospel of peace." Paul, Ephe- 
sians 6:12:15. 



THE CHRIST OF PEACE 



PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES, a few 
years before his death, published to the world 
a prophetic book which was immediately ranked 
as one of the greatest essays of the Nineteenth 
Century. It bore the title, "The Moral Equiv- 
alent of War." In this timely and pointed mes- 
sage, James contended that the military instinct 
and the love of war are hereditary in us, that we 
possess an innate pugnacity received from our 
ancestors. James traced the history of the ques- 
tion to the earliest tribes of the earth who were 
fighters for the pure love of plunder. Greek and 
Roman history were a panorama of jingoism, 
war for its own warlike sake. The wars of Alex- 
ander the Great and the Caesars were piratical 
and lustful, horrible reading, all. War was the 
bloody nurse that trained society into law. War 
was bred into our bones and thousands of years of 
peace will not drive it out. Now, proposes Will- 
iam James, we do not desire to eradicate the 

95 



9 6 



Christ Lord of Battles 



fighting instincts of man. Life would be mawkish 
and dishwatery and as spineless as blubber were 
it not for the military instincts and virtues. But 
what we do need is to make war serve society in- 
stead of destroying it. 

James then proposes a moral equivalent for 
war. Let us have an army of conscription of all 
boys of the nation from eighteen to twenty-one 
years of age. Let them war against evil and for 
the conquest of Nature. Send these young men 
to the coal fields, to the fishing fleets, to road-build- 
ing and tunnel-making. They shall return from 
the strenuous life not snobs but men, better fathers, 
husbands, sons, teachers, and their fighting instincts 
shall be chastened and purified to fight the higher 
spiritual battles of the world, where we battle 
not against flesh and blood but against principal- 
ities, spiritual evils in high places. Let them put 
on the full armour of God — the helmet of salva- 
tion, the breastplate of righteousness, the sword 
of the spirit, and be shod with the gospel of the 
preparation of Peace. A man's worst enemies 
may, after all, be those of his own household. 

Whatever may have been the great offices of 
War in the past, to further God's redemption, 



The Christ of Peace 97 

through the flotsam and jetsam of our confusing 
times a body of opinion is taking shape and di- 
mension to the effect that there is enough Idealism 
potential and Christianity qualitative to heal the 
wounds of international strife, to lay the basis of 
international brotherliness, to erect the temple 
of enduring Peace, and to give the lie to what 
Kipling meant to be denied: — 

We are very slightly changed 
From the simi-apes who ranged 
India's prehistoric clay. 
Whoso drew the longest bow 
Ran his brother down you know 
As we run men down today. 

Thus the artless songs I sing 
Do not deal with anything 
New or never said before. 
As it was in the beginning 
Is today's official sinning 
And shall be evermore. 

The conviction spreads throughout Christen- 
dom that the pessimism about war's permanent 
place in the Evolution of Destiny can no longer 
hold its place in the sun; that u as it was in the 
beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without 
end," must fade before the growing dawn of con- 
fidential and perpetual peace. The night is far 



9 8 Christ Lord of Battles 

spent and the day is at hand! Here is the new 
Day to toast, the Day of the League of Nations, 
which shall be called the Kingdom of God, the 
fulfilment of an ancient vision that the kingdoms 
of this world should become the Kingdom of One 
Lord. If such a Day be not fulfilled we have not 
"moved two inches since Calvary." 

Let one look with discernment into the history 
of Israel and he cannot fail to be impressed with 
the moral grandeur of her prophets and their mis- 
sion of the divine self-disclosure of God to the 
world. Amos the prophet of righteousness, 
Hosea the prophet of love, Ezekiel the prophet of 
the exile, Isaiah the prophet of peace and the 
Messianic hope, spoke with ascending and increas- 
ing fulness until their partial disclosures were rap- 
turously completed in Christ. "God who in sun- 
dry times and diverse manners in times past hath 
spoken unto the fathers through the prophets, 
hath in these latter days spoken unto us, through 
His Son." Alas! In spite of their sweet faith- 
fulness these moral giants of Israel had a hard 
lot. Amos was insulted and expelled by the high 
priest of Bethel, and Isaiah, if tradition be true, 
was sawn asunder in Jerusalem. From Moses to 



The Christ of Peace 



99 



Malachi there was an uninterrupted monotony of 
meanness shown to these fellows. After the good 
King Josiah was slain in battle on the plains of 
Esdraelon, Israel relapsed into heathenism. The 
prophets had a task almost too difficult to endure 
and their cries of anguish were pathetic. In ancient 
Israel the spirit of prophecy was so strong that 
there were schools of the prophets. Fantastic 
dreams, the whispers of trees, the flights of birds, 
storms and plagues of nature, the movements of 
sun, moon and stars, were all looked upon prophet- 
ically as indications of God's judgments. Joshua 
would cast lots to find out the criminal, or David 
used the whisper in the trees as sign for battle. 
These prophets felt the thrill of God and stood 
above Israel; they established Zion, spoke in be- 
half of justice, pointed to God's omnipotent guid- 
ance, showed the brilliant destiny of Israel. What 
mighty fellows they were ! Voice and trumpet of 
Jehovah, they snapped at public opinion and 
blurted out the truth. 

In vulgar and common thought a prophet has 
degenerated into a kind of necromancer, or slight- 
of hand, who foretells the future and of such an 
unworthy conception of prophet and prophecy it 



100 



Christ Lord of Battles 



is our foremost duty to divest ourselves. Among 
the Greeks of Plato's time the Prophets at the 
Delphic oracle expounded Zeus to the people, and 
in that Greek sense must we think of the Hebrew 
prophets. Prediction was only a subordinate, ac- 
cidental part of their office. But these prophets 
( "moral giants/' Carlyle says ( poured God's judg- 
ments like cataracts on sin, yet offering healing 
streams of tenderness. The exhortation is flung 
at us — "Quench not the spirit of prophecy"; al- 
though a prophet is never without honor save in 
his own country. 

By far the mightiest of all these prophetic voices 
of Israel was Isaiah. For 120 years before Isaiah, 
the Assyrian Kings had periodically plundered the 
Western States, Judah included. Tiglath Piles- 
ser, the Kaiser of the day, had the world conquest 
lust, and under the leadership of Assyrian gods 
pictured as bulls, and with Hunlike ferocity he car- 
ried whole nations away into slavery. Judah was 
beset by Egypt on the South, Phoencia on the 
West, Damascus on the North, Assyria on the 
East, a political surface broken and restless with 
unending wars, and Judah the Belgium to be 
sucked into the whirlpool of conflicting powers. 



The Christ of Peace 



IOI 



Each of these nations had its tribal gods for vic- 
tory, Judah included. When Ahaz was beaten by 
Assyria he said: 'The gods of Syria have helped 
them, therefore will I sacrifice unto them," and 
often the Temple in Jerusalem became the shelter 
of heathen idols. It was a world of warring 
clans, with no ideas of a universal God, wallowing 
in stupidity, sprawling in war-lust, needing re- 
demption as much as our melancholy planet today. 
In such an hour Isaiah, from close quarters with 
God, spoke on war and peace, sentences mightier 
than the tramp-tramp-tramp of armies. 

The seventh of Isaiah, with its prophecy of Im- 
manuel, the God of Peace, found utterance at the 
most critical times of Judah's history. A power- 
ful combination of Damascus and Samaria was 
organized against King Ahaz, marched down the 
Jordan, overturned Jewish supremacy in Edon, 
defeated Ahaz in a great battle and besieged 
Jerusalem. In his distress Ahaz appealed to Tig- 
lath Pilesser who soon came to the rescue. The 
brilliant incident ends with Ahaz worshipping with 
the Assyrians. Like other prophets, Dante or 
Milton or Luther, Isaiah knew how to use the 
scourage as well as the trumphet. Isaiah calls 



102 



Christ Lord of Battles 



Judah a vineyard neglected and run to thorns and 
briers. Its wild grapes come from mammonism, 
giddy drunkenness, bribes. And how can we de- 
plore those corrupt features of Judah without rous- 
ing conscience or similar themes today? For with 
remarkable persistence in every civilization the two 
main passions of the human heart, the love of 
money and the love of pleasure, the love of 
gathering and the love of squandering, work havoc 
with the human soul. 

In the midst of all the moral and political 
wreckage of Judah, with foes without and fears 
within, Isaiah ventures a prophecy on Peace, and 
the God of Peace. There is no better parallel 
to the scene in all history than that of King Lear, 
surrounded by enemies and ungrateful friends, 
weighed down with sufferings, his disordered mind 
growing dizzy before the abyss of madness. And 
as King Lear speaks to his day, u The Heavens 
do their visible spirits send quickly down to tame 
these vile offenses/' so Isaiah speaks to the ob- 
durate folly of Judah. "Hear, O ye Israel. The 
people that walked in darkness have seen a great 
light. For unto us a child is born and unto us a 
son is given, and the government shall be upon 



The Christ of Peace 



103 



his shoulders. And his name shall be called Won- 
derful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting 
Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of 
his peaceful government there shall be no end, 
upon the throne of David to uphold it with right- 
eousness and justice forever. And the zeal of 
Jehovah of Hosts shall perform it." It has been 
felt that this solemn promise of the Royal House 
of God, Immanuel or God-With-Us, found itself 
when One took tabernacle among us and declared 
for Peace. "My peace I leave with you," in a 
Kingdom not meat and drink, but righteousness 
and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. 

And then the Christ came ! 

The organization of Christianity for twenty 
centuries now has been a tremendous experiment 
in the Chemistry of human and universal brother- 
hood. The movement had its root and origin in 
the first century when brotherhood was little 
known outside the physical relation and the roof 
dimensions of the private family. A young Man 
was born into Palestine when Roman militarism 
was rampant and even religion was formal and un- 
brotherly. He called together twelve men and 



104 Christ Lord of Battles 

called them brethren, with relations as different 
from Judaism as socialism is from feudalism. The 
organization was founded on forbearance and 
good will, and the first great discussion that agi- 
tated it concerned the extent of its brotherliness, — 
was it confined to the Jews or was it to reach out 
to all races? At one great bound it broke with 
Judaism and declared for Jew and Gentile, bond 
and free. In that organization brother was not 
to go to law with brother, the brethren were to 
greet one another with a holy kiss, they would 
know that they had passed from death unto life 
because they loved the brethren, and inasmuch as 
they did anything of love unto one of the least of 
these His brethren, they did it to Him. Frankly 
and avowedly, is this organization today consent- 
ing to a permanent cleavage of the race and the 
impossibility of a world-wide brotherhood? There 
have been times when the Church has spent its 
enthusiasm and vitality on some issue of minor 
importance. Once the Church thought its main 
business to be preparation for the end of the world 
and they harped the Millennial doctrine. For 
long years the Church thought its main task to be 
rescue of the tomb of her Lord from the infidels, 



The Christ of Peace 105 

and they spilt blood enough in the enterprise to 
make a river. Some Christians still believe it 
the main task of the Church to build up its theoc- 
racy of doctrine and order. But no one could 
listen for five minutes to Christ without a realiza- 
tion of what He considered first and prior. Jesus 
proclaimed a world order, the Kingdom of God, 
inclusive of all tribes and people, the Parliament 
of Man, the Universal Brotherhood. If the or- 
ganization mentioned cannot take the leaves of 
the Tree of Life, meant for the "healing of the 
nations" and distil out of them any potion of 
medicine for our present hatred malady, let us 
all throw up our hands, and resign the chariot 
of our planet to the lurch of Hell ! But yet one 
last hope is held out — that the organization in 
question can heal the sick, cast out devils, touch 
any deadly thing without harm — and the gates of 
Hell shall not prevail against it! 

It is accurate to say that the central conception 
of Christianity is the Kingdom of God. The 
main objective of Christianity is certainly not the 
Church or Ecclesia, but a world organization pene- 
trating all other organizations and including them 
— the Kingdom of God. Christ was first attracted 



106 Christ Lord of Battles 

to the ministry of John the Baptist because he an- 
nounced that u the Kingdom of God is at hand." 
Tn His first notable public utterance Christ urged 
"to seek first the Kingdom of God and its right- 
eousness" and have all other things accumulate 
around that. The Kingdom is of such magnitude 
morally that "he that is least in the Kingdom of 
God is greater than John the Baptist." The King- 
dom was to be such a leaven in the social and 
economic lump that in time all the kingdoms of 
this world were to become the Kingdom of Our 
Lord and His Christ. 

The Kingdom of God of which Jesus Christ is 
pleader and head and King and Lord is, in po- 
litical parlance, none less than the League of 
Nations. It is much more than the League of 
Nations, but it is not less. It is the Parliament of 
Man of Kant, the League of Wilson, the fulfilled 
vision of Tennyson. 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye would see, 
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that could 

be, 

Till the war drums throbbed no longer and the battle 

flags were furled, 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the World! 

A hurried glance over the history of Europe 
in the last twenty-five years makes one w T onder, 



The Christ of Peace 



not so much that the war broke out in 19 14, as 
that it did not come sooner. Refresh your mind 
again with another glance at the flimsy barriers 
of peace erected in the last quarter century to hold 
back the angry waters of war. Outside peace 
advocates, like Carnegie and Baroness von Sutner, 
whose authority was purely that of sentiment, a 
few Utopian socialists, and flimsy "scraps of 
paper," what was there to maintain the peace? 
True, there were two great alliances, England, 
France, Russia; Germany, Austria, Italy, and each 
of these alliances, be it understood, was a peace 
pact with the purpose of a defense of rights and 
with no aim at aggression. Take the Alliance of 
the Central Powers formed in 1882 whereby it 
is agreed that if one of the high contracting powers 
be attacked, the other high contracting powers 
are bound reciprocally to assist with all the mili- 
tary force of their empires and to make peace 
only by common consent. The stated objective 
of Germany, Austria, and Italy was clearly only 
defensive, not aggressive. And again the treaty 
of England, France, and Russia of 1904, while 
it has never been published, is known to be purely 
a peace treaty and for mutual defense in case 
of attack. Yet these two peace combinations, 



io8 



Christ Lord of Battles 



existing purely for the sake of the preservation of 
peace, have defeated their own ends, and have 
repeatedly stirred Europe with the apprehension 
and alarm of war. The impression soon got 
abroad in London and Paris that Germany, Aus- 
tria, Italy, meant to strike a blow of aggression. 
And likewise in Berlin and Vienna it was felt that 
Edward VII was engineering a combination 
against the Central Powers. When, after the 
death of Edward VII, the Kaiser and the Crown 
Prince visited England, and when such cordial 
intimacy and friendship was shown between the 
English and German courts, it was hoped that 
suspicion and coldness would vanish like a fog 
under the sunlight. Then alas ! came the affair 
at Morocco. Everybody is still sick oyer that dis- 
pute between Germany and France about the treaty 
of 1904, affirming the independence and integrity 
of Morocco. And anyone who can think in a 
straight line will see that it was only the efforts 
of Sir Edward Grey that kept the world then and 
there from blood. But the confused incident left 
in its wake painful impressions and bitter feelings 
and much mistrust. Again, in the Balkan crisis, 
with Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey (the powder mill 



The Christ of Peace 109 

of Europe) exploding, it was only the sincere ef- 
forts of Germany and England that averted the 
European conflagration. 

Prior to the present Peace Conference, in inter- 
national matters, Europe has been in the same 
situation as the gold-miners of California in 1849, 
where each man had to carry arms until a vigilance 
committee and a staple government could bring 
about disarmament. What Europe needed was a 
Central International government. To accom- 
plish this we must substitute for the Balance of 
Power a Pooling of Power of all the naval and 
army strength of all the nations. A territory 
might be selected in Belgium or Switzerland or 
Holland as a District of Columbia for the union 
of all the nations. There the contracting nations 
would agree to submit all disputes for trial. Such 
a League of Nations would constitute a great Mu- 
tual Insurance Company for the preservation of 
peace and the prevention of wars forever. The 
original colonies of the United States of America 
once looked at one another with jealousy, distrust, 
hostility, as do now the sovereign States of Europe. 
What was needed in 19 14 was a United States of 
Europe, yes, a United States of the world. The 



no Christ Lord of Battles 



lack of it was the cause, ultimate and final, of our 
Great Sorrow; for peace not enforced is a rope 
of sand. Whatever may have been the direct 
and immediate cause of the World disaster, 
whether Schwein-politic, or Serbian anarchy, or 
Prussian malevolence, or what not, — the ultimate 
and final cause was a lack of a United States of 
the World. 

The permanent peace of the World must be 
founded upon the two basic Christian principles of 
righteousness and love. By the power of the 
sword the Allied world has secured the first ele- 
ment, Righteousness, as the cornerstone of the 
League of Nations. Enduring peace must be 
founded on what is right. The writer of Hebrews 
tells of a mysterious man who met Abraham on 
the plains of the promised land, and to this mys- 
terious personage Abraham paid titles. The 
strange visitant appears but for a moment, then 
vanishes into the unknown like a dissolving view 
or a vision of the night. One thing is told con- 
cerning him. His name is Melchizedec, or King 
of Righteousness. Most significant of all, Mel- 
chizedec lives in Salem, which is City of Peace. 
"The fruit of Righteousness is Peace, and the ef- 



The Christ of Peace in 



feet of righteousness is quietness and confidence 
forever. " 

But the second equally essential basis is Love. 
We shall have to learn that God lets His rain fall 
on the just and the unjust, that He hath made 
of one blood all nations, that the quality of mercy 
is not strained, that it is twice blest, that it becomes 
the earthly monarch better than his crown. There 
doth earthly power seem likest God's when mercy 
seasons justice. 

The sentiment of love to Germany may be im- 
possible or improbable to the countless babes and 
women of England and France who "wait for the 
touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice 
that is still." Perhaps the present generation of 
wounded and bereaved must first pass away before 
England, France, and Germany can clasp Jiands. 
But says Mr. H. G. Wells, "Behind the barriers, 
German and anti-German must prepare the peace 
where all can meet without accusation of resent- 
ment, without slobbering either sentimentality or 
unforgettable injuries. We want no pro-German 
or anti-German League after the war; we want 
patience and silence" — till God comes! 

It is a hard saying, to be sure, but one worthy 



112 



Christ Lord of Battles 



of all acceptation that no permanent peace can be 
.founded on humiliation and enmity, but only on 
respect and international friendship. After the 
terrible war between England and France of 1799, 
the great English statesman, William Pitt, ex- 
pressed the creed when he said, "Our object in 
this War was merely security, security and nothing 
more. We do not w r ant a peace where the victor 
dwells with savage delight on the prostrate condi- 
tion of the conquered." After the defeat of the 
Scourge of Europe at Waterloo, the Duke of 
Wellington (a true Englishman) spoke for Eng- 
land: "It is not our business to humiliate France 
by taking her territory — but if we can we should 
win the world back to peaceful habits. " So it 
shall be at the close of this Armageddon. The 
leaders of Allied thought at the great Peace-table 
are men of humane instinct and they will see that 
in future the nations of Europe must live together 
as brothers. Reparation indeed shall be made 
in full, but hatred — away with it! 

Jesus Christ commanded, "Be ye perfect as 
your heavenly Father is perfect. If ye love only 
them that love you what do ye more than the 
publicans?" If such an attitude be not practica- 



The Christ of Peace 



"3 



ble internationally, then Christianity is Utopian 
idealism, a story for the poet's books, and Mo- 
hammedanism has us beaten, "hands down," and 
we confess that the Allies are victims of the same 
hell of passions and imbecilities that we seek to 
crush in Prussia. But thanks to the idealism of 
Woodrow Wilson's statesmanship, we have bat- 
tled for something nobler than that! Wilson has 
implored the American people to see that we do 
not fight against the German people, but against 
their lustful Prussianism. In a word, Woodrow 
Wilson has put into the light of International day 
the League of Nations policy — which in effect is 
the Kingdom of God. The root fault (call it a 
religious name, sin) of the "Balance of Power" 
peace of the last hundred years, since the Congress 
of Vienna, has been that Alliances and Ententes 
have constantly nagged and harassed and bullied 
and "resisted" one another with suspicions and ex- 
asperations. If this war does not destroy and 
shatter out of the good society of decency that old 
method of peace preservation and bring in a 
League of All Nations, it will introduce a laugh 
from all the devils of hell that will reverberate, 
like guns of a universal western battle front, over 



H4 



Christ Lord of Battles 



all our planet. Under such a League of Peace we 
shall no longer resist one another, but we shall 
resist evil, and overcome evil with organized and 
effective and triumphant good. Such a League 
of Peace can say, "Vengeance is mine; I will re- 
pay." 

When a possible war arose in the past there 
were four kinds of pressure to be exercised, diplo- 
macy, public opinion, economic interests, and mili- 
tary power. A League of Nations with all these 
pressures entrusted to it would be irresistible for 
enhancing peace. 

But beyond the exercise of diplomacy and public 
opinion and economic pressure and military pres- 
sure is the necessity of a more beautiful element — 
Friendship. We have in mind now the case of 
Japan and the United States. Japan is a land of 
cherry-blossoms, and wisteria, of beautiful moun- 
tains and delicate art, of fascinating people and 
charm. But Japan is also taking on withi a ven- 
geance the spirit and dynamic of the West. If 
we read the cheap Jingo papers wq can get a very 
bad impression of Japan. If we nurse our suspi- 
cions we can easily see that Japan is arrogant, 



The Christ of Peace 115 

unblushingly insincere, land-hungry, seizing, with- 
in twenty years Formosa, Korea, South Manchu- 
ria, mistreating China, trying to establish a naval 
bases in Mexico, and to plant its flag on the Rocky 
Mountains. On the other hand every suspicion 
we have had of Japan, Japan has had of America. 
Japanese Jingoists consider America dollar-mad, 
materialistic, hypocritical, carrying Christ to the 
heathen, along with imperialistic ambitions to the 
Orient, America seizes Hawaii, the Philippines, 
Panama, and when it comes to a real showdown 
Japan has more grounds for her suspicions than 
we have. In Japan Americans were permitted to 
hold ground like other aliens, but in California 
there was frank discrimination against the Japan- 
ese. Suspicion is a hard monster to allay, You 
cannot kill suspicion with armies or navies, by de- 
stroying forts, or by killing people. The only cure 
for international suspicion is overt and open inter- 
national friendship. Suppose, instead of protect- 
ing ourselves from Japan with the projection of 
another battleship, we took the $10,000,000, 
and presented to Japan a half dozen colleges, 
hospitals and Statues of Liberty. Such a protest 



1 1 6 Christ Lord of Battles 

of friendship would go the stellar places farther 
to seal Japanese-American peace than four fleets 
of battleships patrolling Pacific waters. 

Following the Boxer uprising in China, when 
indemnity was granted the nations, the sum of 
$25,000,000 was awarded the United States for 
the loss of American life and property. John 
Hay, our Secretary of State, moved by the loftiest 
motives, proposed to remit to China $13,000,000 
of the sum. China, deeply moved by this act of 
generosity and friendship set aside the sum to 
send six hundred of her best students to America 
annually for education in our universities. That 
act of America has sealed the friendship of China 
to us with hoops of steel. Beyond what Hamil- 
ton Holt calls peace by "diplomacy, public opinion, 
economic pressure, and military force," is the 
added element, — international friendship. When 
the law of international friendship goes out from 
Mt. Zion, then they shall beat their swords into 
ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, 
and they shall make war no more forever, except 
in what William James calls "the moral equivalent 
for war." 

The most critical hour is now brooding over the 



The Christ of Peace 117 

World since the spirit of God brooded over the 
void at creation. Every constructive soul feels 
the deep, passionate, impatient yearning for the 
Consummation of Everlasting Peace. It is time for 
Jesus Christ to "break down the middle wall of 
partition, "abolishing enmity and so making 
peace." 

It is a strategic and pressing hour! We must 
embrace its divine opportunity in the ascendant. 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 

Omitted, all the voyage of their life 

Is bound in shallows and in miseries, 

On such a sea are we now afloat, 

And we must take the current when it serves 

Or lose our venture. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

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